


Perfection and Imperfection

by luxluminaire



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Character Study, Drama, F/F, F/M, Romance, Sexual Content, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-30
Updated: 2014-05-09
Packaged: 2018-01-17 12:48:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 47,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1388227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luxluminaire/pseuds/luxluminaire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not exactly love at first sight when Samantha Traynor meets Shepard, but something still inevitably draws her to the Commander. Little does she know that pursuing a relationship with her is far more complicated than she has anticipated, and she soon realizes that Shepard the woman is much different from Shepard the hero.</p><p>(An examination of Shepard during the course of Mass Effect 3 through the eyes of one comm specialist. Alternatively, "I Slept With Commander Shepard and All I Got Was This Stupid Broken Heart.")</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Like most people who work for the Alliance, Samantha Traynor hears of Commander Shepard long before before she meets her. It’s impossible to take two steps in any direction, metaphorically speaking, without hearing about how Shepard is the hero of the Skyllian Blitz, the savior of the Citadel, and, more recently, the traitor who worked alongside Cerberus. Samantha follows the vid reports that she sees with mild interest, only because it’s always a good topic of conversation when things get boring in the labs. As far as she’s concerned, though, Shepard is only a faraway figure who she has no chance of actually encountering in real life. War heroes aren’t exactly likely to come into Alliance labs, anyway.

When Samantha is pulled out of the labs to work on retrofitting a starship called the Normandy SR-2, she doesn’t think twice. The name of the ship sounds vaguely familiar, of course, but she figures that she probably has Earth history on her mind. It’s not until she hears the ship’s pilot mention something about Commander Shepard that she realizes that she has been working on the ship that Shepard commands. But it’s not Shepard’s ship anymore, not since she was taken into Alliance custody in Vancouver six months ago (some say for working with Cerberus, others say for blowing up a batarian system, and Samantha hasn’t been able to figure out which is the real story). From what she has heard, the ship will go to Admiral Anderson after the retrofits are completed, and then Samantha will be back in the labs as usual. Nothing out of the ordinary, really.

But then the Reapers arrive, cutting a swath of death and destruction across Earth in their wake, and everything changes.

 

* * *

 

Samantha maintains that it was a lucky accident that she was onboard the Normandy when the Reapers hit. She’d happened to be working overtime that day, and so she’d had no choice but to strap herself in and get ready for takeoff when the ship had evacuated Earth. She wouldn’t want to be anywhere else during a Reaper attack, though, especially when she catches a glimpse of Commander Shepard herself walking through the CIC like a woman on a mission. It’s almost enough to keep her from wanting to burst into tears as she thinks about Earth burning.

She doesn’t have the chance to meet Shepard properly until several days after their departure from Earth. Samantha has only heard second-hand reports as to what the Commander has been up to: dealing with an issue with the archives on Mars that one of her old crew members had been investigating, reporting to the Council, checking on the status of another one of her crew who had been critically injured on Mars. However, now that everyone has a little bit of downtime before the ship reaches its next destination, Samantha figures that now is as good of a time as ever to properly introduce herself to Shepard and explain some of the new upgrades. She’ll only have to forget that she is about to speak to one of the Alliance’s biggest heroes.

“EDI?” she says into her comm, addressing the VI that she’d become well acquainted with while working on the retrofits. She has her suspicions that EDI is something more than a VI, judging from the way she has heard her talk to Joker, the ship’s pilot, but she’s not going to question that matter right now. After all, her specialty is quantum entanglement, not synthetic intelligence.

“Yes, Specialist Traynor?” The calm female voice that she hears in response makes her spine tingle with pleasure. It should be illegal to make synthetics with such attractive voices, she decides as she struggles to remember what exactly she wanted to ask.

“I was wondering if you could tell me where Commander Shepard is. I wanted to tell her about the retrofits and new additions to the ship, since she probably hasn’t had much time to check them out for herself.”

“Commander Shepard is currently enjoying some free time in her cabin,” EDI replies. “I shall alert her of your imminent arrival.”

“Yes, please. Thank you, EDI.” God, the things that Samantha wants to do EDI’s voice even when it says the most mundane things. Right now, she wants nothing more than to grab that voice by the hair and nibble her way down its back. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

“Logging you out, Traynor,” says EDI as a means of farewell before the comm link disconnects.

Samantha mentally gathers herself before leaving the CIC for the elevator, bringing with her the datapad that highlights some of the most important changes that the Alliance has made to the ship. As the elevator ascends to Deck 1, she attempts to convince herself that she shouldn’t be nervous at the prospect of talking to Commander Shepard. Shepard’s only another human being in the end--another human being who is one of the greatest soldiers in the Alliance, and, on top of that, also happens to be unfairly attractive. Samantha sighs. As long as she doesn’t end up making a fool of herself during this meeting, she’ll consider it a victory.

The door to Shepard’s quarters has been left open, and so with a deep breath, she enters. There, standing in front of her, is Commander Shepard in the flesh. The hero. The legend. No, stop thinking about that, she tells herself sternly.

“Commander Shepard?” Samantha says. “I’m Specialist--oh.” She breaks off abruptly, seeing that Shepard is not alone. Standing near her is the asari scientist that they’d picked up on Mars, Dr. T’Soni. Samantha’s nervous enthusiasm has interrupted their conversation, and now Shepard must think that she’s irredeemably rude.

“I--I beg your pardon,” she stammers out, hoping that she can at least make a good recovery from her interruption. “I thought you were alone.”

“I was just leaving,” says Dr. T’Soni, turning and departing from the room with no further words of goodbye to Shepard. Samantha hopes this swift exit hasn’t been caused by any of her own actions. She notices that Shepard’s eyes remain on Dr. T’Soni as she leaves, a slight frown set across her lips.

She takes another deep breath, ready to start her introduction over properly this time. “Commander Shepard? I’m Comm Specialist Samantha Traynor, with Alliance R&D.” She salutes. “I was part of the team retrofitting the Normandy after you turned it over to the Alliance.” In a moment of bravery, she takes a few more steps into the room. She doesn’t quite know what to say next, however. Something about the rest of her team, maybe? She tries not to think about what might have happened to the others working on the retrofits who hadn’t been lucky enough to escape Earth. “There weren’t many of us aboard when the Reapers hit…” she begins before trailing off lamely.

“Slow down, Specialist Traynor.” Despite the inherent reprimand in Shepard’s words, her voice carries a certain amount of reassurance that sets Samantha a little more at ease. “You’re doing fine.”

“Thank you,” she says, one part embarrassed that Shepard has taken note of her nerves and another part relieved that she isn’t judging her too harshly. “I worked in a lab. I never thought I’d be serving on a ship.”

Shepard gives a brief nod, as if to say _Don’t worry, I understand_. “Why don’t you tell me more about the retrofits?” she asks as she walks further into the room as a means of inviting Samantha in past the doorway.

“The ship’s in line with Alliance regs now, and it has new top-of-the-line quantum entanglement communicators,” Samantha explains, glad that they’ve moved on to something that she can speak about with much more confidence. She glances around the interior of Shepard’s cabin as she speaks. A large fish tank lines one of the walls, but it is currently devoid of any fish. “In fact, Admiral Anderson had intended to use the Normandy as his mobile command center.”

“That’s… no longer an option,” says Shepard.

Samantha turns her full attention back to her. “Yes, I heard that he chose to stay and fight.” The brief shadow that crosses Shepard’s expression tells her that she shouldn’t have brought this up. “In any event,” she continues, trying to change the subject, “I’m honored to serve under you.” Poor choice of words there, she realizes too late as she her cheeks burn with embarrassment. “Commander,” she adds hastily, desperately hoping that she has avoided sounding like she’s using the oldest military pickup line in the book. “I--I mean, for as long as you need me, that is. They only sent me here to oversee the retrofits…” She’s rambling now, trying too hard to recover once again. She should have stuck to talking about the quantum entanglement communicators.

“Shepard,” comes the heavenly sound of EDI’s voice. “Some of our systems require further testing, and Specialist Traynor has been extremely effective during installation. I would prefer that she remain.” As embarrassing as it is to have EDI rescue her in conversation like this, Samantha is eternally grateful to the dulcet tones of that disembodied voice.

“Got it, EDI,” Shepard replies with a nod to nothing in particular.

Something isn’t quite right about EDI’s statement, though. Samantha mentally replays the words in her head to try to figure out exactly what is off about them. “Wait,” she says, coming to a realization. “Since when does a virtual intelligence make requests?”

“EDI’s an AI,” Shepard corrects her, giving her an unmistakable “you didn’t know that?” look. “Fully self-aware.”

“Oh, I _knew_ it!” Samantha exclaims, glad that her suspicions about EDI hadn’t been completely unfounded. “I _knew_ Joker was lying!”

The implications of this new piece of information then hit her full in the face. If EDI is a self-aware synthetic, then that means that she is able to fully process the meaning of everything that Samantha has said to her--including all of the times that she has vocalized her desires to do rather inappropriate things to EDI’s voice. Well, that adds a whole new level of mortification on top of making a general fool of herself in front of Shepard.

“Jeff requested that I pretend to be a simple VI to protect myself,” EDI says. “I apologize for the deception.”

“Thanks, EDI.” Deciding that she should offer her own apology, she adds, “And I apologize for all the times I talked about how, ah... _attractive_ your voice was.” She wishes that she doesn’t have to mention this in front of Shepard. Shepard probably thinks that she’s some kind of synthetics-obsessed freak now.

“Anyway,” she continues, turning her attention back to Shepard in a desperate attempt to keep EDI from making any further comments. “Shall I give you a tour? I think you’ll be impressed by the new upgrades.”

She takes out the datapad that she has brought with her, swiping through the images on it as she explains everything to Shepard: the CIC, the War Room, the shuttle bay, the executive officer’s quarters that Dr. T’Soni has already claimed. Shepard listens attentively, nodding along with each thing that Samantha says.

“And there you are,” she says to Shepard once she has gone through everything. “Still the same ship as before. It just flies Alliance colors now.” She looks up from the datapad. In the brief moment that she and Shepard’s eyes meet, she notices the color of the Commander’s eyes--a beautiful shade of green. It’s a good thing she hadn’t taken notice of this earlier, or else that might have given her yet another distraction. “Speaking of which,” she continues, remembering an Alliance-related communication notice that she had received before coming to see Shepard, “I believe Admiral Hackett would like to speak to you at the vid comm.”

“Thanks, Traynor,” Shepard replies. “And welcome aboard.”

“My pleasure, Commander.” Samantha salutes before taking her leave, going back to the elevator to return to the CIC. While she awaits the elevator’s descent, she replays her encounter with Shepard in her head. As embarrassing as parts of it had been, it could have gone worse, all things considered. She’s sure that Shepard is so busy that she will have forgotten most of their conversation in a few hours’ time. Or at least Samantha can hope that will be the case.

Before she resumes her work, however, she has a bone to pick with Joker. She storms onto the bridge where he sits at his normal post in the pilot’s seat.

“Joker,” she says in her best scolding voice.

He swivels his chair around to face her. “Aw, crap. What did I do now?”

“You _swore_ to me that EDI was nothing more than a VI!” she exclaims. “And then I had to find out from Commander Shepard that she’s actually an AI, and now she must think I have some kind of weird synthetic fetish because I had to apologize for all the things that I’ve said about EDI’s voice, and--” She breaks off her tirade there, glaring at the blue holographic sphere of EDI’s avatar. The rows of white lights on the glowing interface pulse in and out.

“Means she’s laughing,” Joker says in explanation. He sounds like he’s on the brink of laughter himself.

“It’s not funny! I practically made a fool of myself in front of Commander Shepard!”

“Hey, I had to lie.” Joker raises his hands in an innocent gesture. “Do you know what the Alliance higher-ups would have done if they found out there was an unshackled Cerberus-built AI on the ship? It was so much easier to nod along and pretend she was a VI. We would’ve told you eventually. Probably.”

“In addition, you were not required to make any apology for your comments about my voice while in Shepard’s presence,” EDI adds.

“Yeah, thanks for telling me that now.” Samantha sighs. She should have realized that herself, but rational thought hadn’t exactly been at the forefront of her mind while talking to such an impressive figure as Commander Shepard.

“Anyway, so I guess this means you’ve formally met the Commander,” Joker says, leaning back in his chair comfortably. “What do you think of her?”

“She’s…” Samantha trails off, trying to think of the best words to describe Shepard. “Gorgeous” is the first word that comes to mind, but commenting on her commanding officer’s attractiveness isn’t exactly the most professional thing to do. “She seems to be very good at what she does,” she says instead.

“Yeah, you got that right. She always gets the job done. And makes sure that she leaves no one behind in the process. I don’t think there’s a single one of us on this ship who doesn’t owe our life to her.”

“Quite honestly, I don’t know what would have happened if I hadn’t been aboard this ship when the Reapers hit Earth,” Samantha admits.

“And don’t worry too much about making a fool of yourself around her,” Joker says. “I mean, I know she’s a legend and all, but she’s actually one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet once you get to know her. Providing that you don’t do anything to piss her off, of course. Then she’ll turn into one of the scariest people you’ll ever meet.”

“Thanks, Joker. I’ll try to remember that.” She recalls how Shepard had calmed her clearly apparent nerves during their meeting. Maybe Joker really is onto something. “Anyway, I should get back to work,” she continues. “EDI, you said there were still some systems that needed testing?”

“Yes,” EDI replies. “I will alert you when your assistance is required. Have a pleasant day, Specialist Traynor.”

“You too, EDI.” Can AIs even process whether they are having a good day? She’ll have to ask her that at some point. For now, Samantha  leaves the bridge and returns to her post next to the display of the galaxy map. Upon signing into the terminal there, she finds that even in the short period of time that she has been gone, a whole mass of new emails have arrived. As she expects, most of them need to be flagged for Shepard’s perusal.

She hears the faint sound of Shepard’s voice coming from the comm room, although she can’t quite hear what she’s saying from this distance. The muffled intonation of Shepard’s words as she conferences with Admiral Hackett calms her as she goes through the monotony of flagging messages and checking the comm connections. For the first time since the Normandy took off from Earth, Samantha decides that she might be able to get used to life onboard the ship.


	2. Chapter 2

In her initial assumptions about what serving on an active ship would be like, Samantha hadn’t expected to become close to any of the senior crew members. She’d expected to work alongside them, certainly, but not speak to them about anything that isn’t strictly professional. These preconceived notions, however, don’t account for something that she hasn’t been told: being part of the Normandy’s crew is like having a second family. It’s the kind of family that’s a little eccentric and has a whole wealth of stories that end with the punchline “well, you had to be there,” but it’s a family all the same.

The first person who becomes an unexpected friend to her is Dr. T’Soni--Liara. Their acquaintance begins when she enlists Samantha’s help in setting up the comm systems in her office, but it’s not long at all before they fall into easy conversation about the wonders of academia. Their fields and specialties are completely different, of course, and Samantha knows as much about the Protheans as Liara knows about quantum entanglement. She enjoys the opportunity to talk to another young scientist and researcher, however, even though from a human perspective Liara’s almost one hundred and nine years aren’t young at all.

Of course, despite the amount of time that Samantha spends with her, Liara maintains an aura of secrecy about her. The most obvious secret is why she constantly has a steady stream of encrypted comm traffic coming in and out of her office. The rumors among some of the other members of the junior staff indicate that she is a powerful information broker, but Samantha doesn’t question her on that topic. As long as Liara isn’t doing anything that blatantly goes against Alliance communication regs, it isn’t her concern.

The second unexpected friend that she makes is Commander Shepard, the hero herself. Samantha remembers Joker’s words to her about Shepard’s general kindness and friendliness, but she doesn’t expect to see these qualities in action so quickly. Shepard always makes time to stop and chat with her whenever she’s passing through the CIC, asking how Samantha is doing and whether she has adjusted to ship life yet. The good thing about these conversations is that they allow Samantha to become gradually more comfortable with talking to Shepard. The not-so-good thing is that she is now jumping to all sorts of unrealistic conclusions about why Shepard has been giving her such specific attention.

“Is the Commander always so nice to her subordinates?” Samantha asks Liara one day when she is spending her break time in Liara’s office. After hearing about her love for strategy games, Liara has downloaded a Kepesh-Yakshi board for them to play on. Samantha’s skills are a little rusty from not playing for a while, but she has still managed to defeat Liara in their first round.

“What do you mean?” Liara inquires in response to her question.

“I guess I always thought that she’d be more… I don’t know, distant. Too busy saving the galaxy to chat with the person who’s managing her communications. It’s kind of surprising to see her so involved with everyone.” Samantha moves one of the ships on the game board, preparing to fire at Liara’s holographic fleet.

“I thought the same when I first met her,” says Liara. “I was much like you when I joined her crew--more accustomed to life in the labs or at dig sites than on a ship. I hadn’t even had any long-term personal interaction with humans before I met her. But she would always take the time to come talk to me and help me adjust to serving on a human ship.”

“So it really is just part of her nature,” Samantha muses, more to herself than to Liara. It would have been a long shot to assume that the attention that Shepard has been giving her is out of any personal interest, anyway.

“Is there any particular reason why you’re asking this?” asks Liara. She advances her fleet forward, taking out one of the ships that Samantha has accidentally left vulnerable. Thankfully, the downloadable boards don’t give neural shocks upon losing a frigate, unlike the tournament boards.

“No reason.” Samantha isn’t quite ready to admit that she may be developing a crush on the ship’s commanding officer, especially when she knows that she shouldn’t let anything come out of it. “Anyway,” she continues on, trying to change the subject before Liara inquires further into the matter, “I hear we’re en route to the Citadel right now. That means everyone will have something of a break, right?”

“It’s only a routine visit to restock supplies,” Liara explains. “Shepard likes to get most of her requisitions straight from the Spectre Office. I hear that Dr. Solus needs medical supplies for his work on the genophage cure as well. Shepard will also want to stop by the hospital to visit Kaidan--Major Alenko,” she quickly adds in clarification.

Samantha recalls that Major Alenko is the soldier who had been injured on Mars. “I’ve noticed that there has been frequent email correspondence between the two of them,” she notes. “She seems to be worried about him.”

Liara gives a murmur of assent. She opens her mouth as if to say something else, but instead she remains quiet. Her holographic ships advance across the board. They fire at Samantha’s homeworld, which explodes in an impressive display of glowing blue pyrotechnics.

“Damn it,” she says, jerking away from the board in reflexive anticipation of the neural shock that she expects to come. “I guess I was too distracted by our talk. I commend your daring with a gambit like that, though.”

“Consider us evenly matched for now, then. Shall we play another round?”

Before Samantha can agree to this, Liara’s info drone bobs over to where they sit. “Dr. T’Soni,” it says to her. “You have important business to attend to at Terminal 2. It should be taken care of right away.”

“Thank you, Glyph.” Liara sighs, running a hand across her forehead. “I’m sorry. This will probably take a while. We’ll have to play our third round some other time.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Samantha assures her. “I should get back to work too. EDI and I were working on increasing the efficiency of one of the data feed alert systems earlier, and she wants to run some more tests on it before we reach the Citadel. I’ll hopefully see you later.”

“You too,” says Liara in farewell.

Samantha stands up from the table where they’d been playing their game and departs from the office. As she heads toward the elevator to return to the CIC, she hears the distant yet distinct sound of Shepard’s voice coming from somewhere on the crew deck--and not even intense focus on the data feeds when she returns to her work is enough to keep her attention away from the small coil of desire that builds up in the pit of her stomach.

 

* * *

 

Time is difficult to gauge in space, with the infinite blackness between stars giving no temporal markers. The Normandy, being a human ship, keeps time based on Earth standards, and so the day and night cycles on the ship are arranged so that most of the crew can keep the same hours that they do planetside. Therefore, when Samantha gets off her so-called evening shift at 2300, she easily shifts into her nighttime routine: a cup of tea in the crew lounge, a quick browse of the extranet on her omni-tool, and about six or seven hours of sleep before she has to report for her morning shift at 0700 the next day. She likes routine, and so she is pleased that, with the exception of time-sensitive missions that require schedule adjustments, she is able to maintain a somewhat normal schedule.

Samantha settles down at her usual table in the crew lounge with a steaming mug of tea as she fiddles with the interface of her omni-tool. In the midst of sorting out Shepard’s correspondences earlier in the day, she discovered that she had received an email of her own from her mother. Now that she has a little bit of spare time, she re-reads the message before responding to it.

_Sam-_

_I know you’re probably incredibly busy, but I thought I’d check in anyway. How’s life on the ship? You mentioned in your last message that you were having trouble adjusting. Just take it slow. I don’t think anyone expects a lab technician to become accustomed to working on a warship overnight._

_Things on Horizon are fairly quiet right now. There’s always the fear that the Reapers will show up here next, but I suppose that’s a fear that everyone in the galaxy has. I’m more concerned about you, being on a ship that might end up facing them head-on. But I promise not to worry too much about you, as long as you don’t spend too much time worrying about us. We just need to find hope in the little things to help us through this._

_I know this is probably a long shot, but if you’re ever in the area and have some time off, see if you can visit. Your father and I would love to see you. Stay safe out there, darling._

_Love, Mum_

Even though she hasn’t lived on Horizon for extended periods of time since leaving for university and the Alliance, reading her mother’s words brings a twinge of homesickness to Samantha’s heart. The last time that she had been on her home colony, the visit had been cut short by the arrival of the Collectors. She and her family had fortunately been unharmed, but she shudders to think what would have happened if the Collectors hadn’t been driven off sooner. Another reason why she owes Commander Shepard her life, in the end.

She sips her tea as she types out her response:

_Hi Mum,_

_Things are starting to get a little easier for me around here. Everyone on the ship has been very kind, and I think that has helped me a lot. There’s still a lot of work to be done, though. A lot of it is coordinating comm calls and making sure my commanding officer gets all of her emails, but I spend enough time doing data analysis and improving the QEC’s functionality that it almost feels like I’m still doing lab work. But it’s strange and exciting to have so many important things going on around me. The other day I was working to help coordinate a war summit. I never thought I’d be so close to something so diplomatic!_

_I’m glad to hear that you and Dad are safe for now. I can’t make any promises about coming to visit before this war is over, but I’ll be thinking of you two every day._

_Love, Sam_

She sends the message with a quick touch to the omni-tool’s interface. She wonders what time it is on Horizon right now and whether she should expect a quick response. The colony has longer solar days in comparison to Earth, and so the Horizon standard time has to adjust for that in addition to normal time differences. It’s telling of how long it has been since Samantha has had any sort of permanent residence there that she’s forgotten the precise conversions between Earth time and Horizon time.

She switches the view on her omni-tool to the Alliance News Network newsfeed, and she is around halfway through browsing the day’s stories when she hears approaching footsteps. Looking up out of mere curiosity, she is surprised to see Shepard passing through the lounge. What’s more, this is the rare appearance of an off-duty Shepard. Rather than the armor or uniform that Samantha is used to seeing her in, she’s wearing loose black trousers and a sweatshirt adorned with the N7 logo.

“Hello, Commander,” she greets her. “I don’t usually see you in here. What’s the occasion?”

“I’ve got some paperwork that I want to get done before we land on the Citadel tomorrow,” Shepard replies. “The occasion is that I needed to make a nice big cup of coffee to help me get through it.” Samantha notices the mug that she holds in her hand. The N7 logo is displayed prominently upon it. Briefly, she wonders how many pieces of N7 paraphernalia Shepard owns.

“But if you want some company,” Shepard continues on, “I can put that off for a few minutes.”

“Oh, no. If you have work to do, I don’t want you to feel obligated…” Samantha trails off there, hating how she is allowing her politeness to deprive her of an opportunity to speak to Shepard.

“Don’t worry about it. I have something that I need to ask you, anyway.” Shepard pulls up a chair across from where Samantha sits, setting her mug down on the table.

Samantha’s mind races with all of the possible questions that Shepard might have for her, ranging from the realistic (“Can you set up a better spam filter for my inbox?”) to completely unrealistic (“Do you want to be my comm specialist girlfriend?”). “What is it?” she asks.

“I’m sure you would have let me know if you did,” Shepard says, “but have you received any sort of communication from a Hannah Shepard lately?”

“No, I’m afraid not. I’m sorry.” Samantha can’t recall the names of every single person who sends communication to Shepard, but she’s fairly certain that she would remember receiving something from a person with the same surname as Shepard. “Is she a relative of yours?”

“My mom,” Shepard explains. She raises her mug to her lips and takes a drink. “I haven’t heard from her since the attack on Earth. We’re not exactly the best at keeping in touch with each other because we’re both so busy. But she knew that I was being held in custody on Earth when the Reapers hit, since she’s also in the Alliance military. I thought that by now she would have sent me a message double-checking that I’m actually okay and haven’t gotten myself killed again. Or, you know, letting me know that _she’s_ okay.” She stares down into the depths of her coffee. “It’s her birthday today,” she adds in a softer voice.

“Was she on Earth during the attack?” Samantha inquires. It’s strange to think of Shepard having loved ones that she has to worry about while she’s busy saving the galaxy. With the scale of this war, however, she’s sure that almost every being in the galaxy has someone that they hope and pray are safe.

“No. At least I don’t think so. Last I knew, she was serving as captain of the SSV Orizaba. But that was months ago, when I was still working alongside Cerberus.” Shepard runs the fingers of her left hand up and down the side of her mug in an idle motion. She has nice fingers, Samantha thinks in a moment of distraction. They’re long and thin, marked with calluses that add a rough sort of beauty to their appearance.

“Captain of a starship, huh?” she says, promptly turning her wandering mind back to the current conversation. “I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

“No. No, it doesn’t.” Shepard gives a brief chuckle. “People who know her say I remind them a lot of her--driven, determined, loyal to her crew. And a bit of a hard-ass sometimes.” Again that small laugh, more like a murmur of mild amusement than anything else. “She’s always said that she knew my career would outshine hers the minute I got awarded the Star of Terra for the Skyllian Blitz when I was only twenty-two. But even in the years after that, I could hardly go anywhere without hearing ‘So you’re the younger Shepard!’”

“Now I imagine it must be the opposite,” Samantha says. She drinks the last remnants of her tea, figuring that she should finish it before it goes cold. “It must be a lot of pressure being Commander Shepard’s mother.”

Shepard makes a quiet sound of agreement. “A lot of pressure being Captain Shepard’s daughter, too.” She pauses after these words, quickly gulping down her coffee before clearing her throat. “Sorry. Didn’t mean for things to get personal there.”

“It’s all right,” Samantha assures her. She wants to say more about how it’s kind of nice to see this slightly different side of Shepard, but she’s not entirely sure if such remarks would be appropriate. Even if Shepard is currently off-duty, that doesn’t stop her from being her commanding officer. When their eyes meet for a split second, though, she promptly finds herself distracted again.

“I should, er. I should let you get started on that paperwork,” she continues.

“Mm. Probably a good idea.” Shepard stands up from her seat. “Thanks for the company, Traynor. Have a good night.”

“You too, Commander,” Samantha manages to get out in response. Her eyes remain fixed on Shepard’s retreating back as she leaves the lounge. She’s not sure what exactly it is, but something about their conversation has made Shepard all the more human to her. For the first time since joining the Normandy’s crew, she has observed Shepard not as the legend, but as a woman.

And with this newfound glimpse of Commander Shepard, her small sort-of crush blossoms into a supernova.


	3. Chapter 3

Over the years, Samantha has come to recognize the steps that she always follows when developing feelings for someone. The first step is realizing that a sense of attraction exists, and this manifests itself all too well: the little backflip of anticipation that her stomach does whenever she hears Shepard’s voice in the CIC, the way that she can’t think straight whenever Shepard comes to talk to her at her terminal, the completely unrealistic daydreams that she has about kissing her senseless right there in front of the galaxy map.The realization stage is easy and exhilarating, even if it leads EDI to making comments about how Samantha’s work efficiency has recently dropped by approximately thirty-six percent.

Next comes rationalization, which is significantly less fun. She tells herself that her feelings can’t possibly be romantic in nature. She merely has a great admiration for Shepard. Maybe a bit of a schoolgirl crush, or perhaps a purely physical attraction. Nothing more. Shepard is her commanding officer, after all. Falling for her would be the opposite of a good idea. And besides, Samantha is a sensible, intelligent woman. She should know better than to let herself fall for someone in the middle of a war. A tiny voice in her head, though, reminds her that being attracted to someone sometimes makes people do very stupid things.

The third step is acceptance, in which she comes to the conclusion that she cannot continue to deny how she feels. With no possible way of letting her feelings go away on their own, she is faced with perhaps the most daunting task of all: acting upon her attraction in one way or another. The first course of action is usually determining whether or not the person who is the object of her affections is even capable of returning her affections. Samantha has had feelings for more than one straight woman in her lifetime, and she has learned by now that it’s best to find out early whether a relationship can even happen before letting herself get her hopes up too much. Sure, incompatible orientation hurts, but at least it gives her an easy answer to the question of whether or not she should consider pursuing a relationship.

The problem is that Samantha cannot figure out from her own deductions where Shepard’s preferences lie. Sometimes she can develop suspicions about people’s orientations from her interactions with them, but Shepard is a closed book to her. All she can assume is that the Commander is not currently involved with anyone, because if she were, the tabloids would be all over it. Unable to determine anything by her own intuition, she is therefore forced to bring another person into the situation. Or, more accurately, bring an AI into the situation, since according to Liara, EDI is the biggest blabbermouth on the ship. If anyone could tell Samantha about Shepard’s preferences, it would be her.

“EDI, can I ask you something?” she says into her comm, making sure she’s contacting her on a private channel. She is technically on duty right now, but the CIC is quiet at the moment. Shepard is currently out on a mission, and Samantha has deliberately waited for her to be away from the ship to ask EDI this question. The last thing she needs is to have Shepard overhear anything.

“Certainly, Specialist Traynor,” says EDI. Technically, they could be having this conversation face-to-face thanks to the robotic body that EDI has taken over. Samantha is so used to conversing with her over the comms, however, that she doesn’t consider this possibility until it’s too late. Besides, she hasn’t forgiven EDI for crashing half of the comm systems while attempting to upload herself into the body, even if her robotic form is almost as unfairly attractive as her voice is.

“It’s about Commander Shepard.” She hesitates, swallowing down the embarrassment that rises within her at the prospect of having to ask the question on her mind. “Do you know if she’s, er… interested in women?”

“I do not understand what you mean by ‘interested.’”

Samantha sighs. Of course. EDI might be able to solve complex equations and determine the source of a connection problem in the blink of an eye, but the intricacies and unspoken sentiments of human communication continue to be a mystery to her.

“Do you know if she’s interested in women for, you know, general companionship? Romantically and, er… sexually?” A hot blush spreads across her cheeks.

“Ah. You are asking me if Commander Shepard experiences sexual attraction toward other females.” EDI states this in such calm reply that she might as well be talking about the weather. “While I cannot speak about that matter with any certainty, I--”

“Sounds like someone’s got the hots for the Commander.” Joker’s teasing voice breaks through the comm.

“I-- _Joker_!” Samantha’s embarrassment quickly gives way to indignation. In hindsight, she should have expected that Joker would be present for this conversation. EDI’s mobile platform spends most of her time in the copilot’s seat on the bridge when she is not out in the field with Shepard, and Samantha is fairly certain that Joker never leaves the bridge unless he has a good reason. He probably even _sleeps_ in the pilot’s seat.

“Relax, I’m not gonna tell anyone,” Joker assures her. “If anything, it’s EDI you have to worry about. I don’t think she understands the concept of keeping secrets.”

“Thank you for that assessment, Jeff.” The intonation of EDI’s voice sounds distinctly annoyed. “As I was saying, I do not have any firsthand confirmation about Shepard regarding her sexual preferences. However, due to the fact that her last sexual partner was Dr. T’Soni, it is safe to assume that she holds a certain amount of interest in females.”

Samantha’s stomach drops. Liara. Shepard had been in a relationship with Liara. She can’t believe that she didn’t know this, considering all the conversations that she has had with both of them. Of course, those conversations have never touched upon romantic histories, and so perhaps it shouldn’t be a shock that she is only hearing about their past relationship now. She wonders how recently their relationship had ended. It _has_ to have ended, judging by how EDI had said “last sexual partner” instead of “current sexual partner.”

“If you desire,” EDI continues, “I can investigate her extranet downloads and bookmarks to further determine any preferences--”

“Er, no, that won’t be necessary,” Samantha cuts her off quickly. The thought of Shepard consuming any kind of pornographic material is utterly mortifying. Does Shepard even do that kind of thing? No, best not to think about that. “Anyway, thanks, EDI. That was--that helped me a lot.”

“If things do work out between you and Shepard, make sure to take a vid of it.” Even over the comm, Joker’s suggestive smirk is still evident.

Samantha groans in disgust at his comment. “You are a terrible person, Moreau. And besides, it’s not like I have much of a chance with her in the first place.” Even though a nagging part of her desperately wants a relationship with Shepard, she keeps telling herself things like this to avoid getting her hopes up.

“Hey, never say never,” says Joker. “I’m sure Liara thought the same thing.”

Samantha doesn’t even want to think about Liara right now. She’s not sure if she’ll be able to look her in the eye again without thinking about her and Shepard once being together. “Anyway, I should get back to work,” she says. “Please don’t mention any of this to Commander Shepard. Or anyone else on the ship, for that matter.”

“Your secret is safe with us, Specialist Traynor,” EDI replies. “Logging you out.”

Remembering Joker’s comment about how EDI doesn’t understand the concept of keeping a secret, Samantha is not entirely comforted by this promise. She looks down at her terminal, noticing that she has an alert of a new email for Shepard from Major Alenko. Samantha flags it as “important.” From what she has heard, Alenko will be released from Huerta Memorial shortly. At least that will put one of Shepard’s immediate concerns at ease.

As she settles into monotony of her work, her thoughts inevitably turn to Shepard. Despite her attempts to convince herself otherwise, her conversation with EDI and Joker has given her a little more confidence about her chances with her. Of course, the prospect of pursuing Shepard is more than a little daunting. It’s been a couple of years since Samantha has dated anyone, and she has never really been good at flirting unless she has a couple of drinks in her. Drunkenly hitting on Shepard is the last thing that she wants to do, even if it’s the best way for her to have enough confidence to act on her feelings. And so that brings her back to the start, struggling to figure out what her next move will be.

She sighs. If only romance were as easy to navigate as a strategy game. At least then she’d have a chance at winning.

 

* * *

 

Playing chess with Liara is awkward. Not only because this is Liara’s first time playing, which means Samantha has to deliberately dumb down her own skills so the game doesn’t end too quickly, but also because she can’t stop thinking about what EDI has revealed about Shepard and Liara’s past relationship. Was their breakup fairly recent? Or was it nothing more than a brief affair on the original Normandy three years ago? Whichever it is, Samantha doesn’t sense any open animosity between the two women. Throughout her observation of them in the days that have passed since finding out that they had been together, she has determined that their current interactions fall squarely into the realm of professional friendship. She wonders if it would be safe enough for her to ask Liara about her relationship with Shepard, or if it would be too nosy of her.

“This game is deceptively complicated,” Liara notes as her second bishop flickers out of existence. Samantha wishes that they weren’t playing with a holographic set, since knocking physical pieces off the board is much more fun. She hadn’t been able to find any real chess sets on their last visit to the Citadel, though, and a holo set is better than no set at all.

“It’s because it’s not as flashy as something like Kepesh-Yakshi,” she replies. “There aren’t any missiles or explosions. You only have your mind and the pieces on the board.”

“You should probably play with someone a little more experienced.” After some deliberation, Liara moves one of her only remaining pawns. Samantha promptly takes it out with one of her knights.

“I have. I played a couple of games with Dr. Chakwas in the medbay yesterday. I also played a game against EDI, but I’m fairly sure that she cheats.”

“Is an AI even capable of cheating?” Liara wonders. She moves one of her rooks out of the way of Samantha’s recently moved bishop.

“She can immediately process all the possible outcomes of each move that she makes. That leaves very little room for error. Although maybe that’s not as much cheating as it is using her natural abilities.” Samantha surveys the board in front of her, pondering her next move. “I was thinking that I should ask Commander Shepard if she’s interested in playing.”

“Shepard would be terrible at chess,” says Liara.

“Really? I thought that she’d be good at it because she’s used to planning strategy and tactics.”

Liara shakes her head. “She’d refuse to sacrifice any of her pieces.” She falls silent after this statement, deciding her next move. Samantha wonders whether she realizes how badly she is losing.

“I worry about her sometimes,” Liara admits, breaking through the silence.

“What do you mean?” The softer register of Liara’s voice sends off warning bells in Samantha’s head.

“The last time we were on the Citadel, there was… something of an incident,” Liara explains. She sends her queen forward to take one of Samantha’s pawns. It’s not a huge loss on Samantha’s part--that was a pawn that needed to be sacrificed. “She went out to Purgatory because Lieutenant Vega had offered to buy her a drink. She ended up staying longer, and… well, from what I heard she became so intoxicated that she had to call Garrus to come pick her up.” A frown of displeasure crosses Liara’s expression.

Samantha isn’t surprised that such an incident would worry Liara. She herself wouldn’t have guessed that Commander Shepard would be one to go out and get drunk. “Do you know whether she’d had a reason to do something like that?” she asks.

“No. Not really. We don’t exactly talk much anymore beyond strictly business conversations. Not since…” Liara trails off there.

“I heard that the two of you used to be romantically involved,” Samantha says, unsure if she should bring up this topic.

“Yes,” Liara confirms. “We decided to formally end our relationship shortly after I rejoined the Normandy’s crew. But before that, things between us had been strained for a long time. She had been busy working with Cerberus, I was busy with my own work. I was also harboring my own guilt for being the one who turned her body over to Cerberus in the first place. So in the end, things just didn’t work out between us.”

So the breakup had been recent. _Very_ recent. As in Liara may have still technically been with Shepard when Samantha had interrupted them in Shepard’s cabin when she had introduced herself to the Commander. “I’m sorry,” is all Samantha can think of to say in response.

“You don’t need to be sorry. To be honest, at the time I had already reached the point when I realized that the end of our relationship was inevitable.” Liara looks down at the flickering holograms on the chessboard. She doesn’t have many pieces left, although fortunately for her she hasn’t yet lost her queen. “Shepard is an extraordinary woman. But she is a complex woman as well. And… difficult to love.”

“What do you mean by that?” Samantha’s mouth has gone dry. She doesn’t like the way that Liara has hesitated around those last words. Has Liara figured out that she has developed feelings for Shepard? Is she setting forth some sort of oblique warning to Samantha to not let herself get emotionally involved with Shepard?

“I’m sure that you’ve noticed how charismatic, kind, and fiercely loyal she is,” says Liara. “She has a way of getting others to open up to her that I have always envied. All of these things are part of the side of Shepard that everyone knows and calls a hero. But because of this, she places an immense amount of pressure on herself. When she suffers under this pressure, she puts up walls around herself and continues on. Showing that she is weak or vulnerable is nothing more than a sign of failure to her. And for her, failure is the worst possible outcome. That is why, no matter how much of yourself you have shown to her, she will always keep her own issues closed off to you.”

Samantha remembers how Shepard had mentioned feeling the pressure of being her mother’s daughter and then promptly apologized for letting things get too personal. Now that she thinks about it, that one conversation about whether the Normandy has received word from Shepard’s mother is the only time when she has heard Shepard talk about her personal worries that are unrelated to how she is going to fight this war.

“I don’t mean to speak ill of her when I say these things,” Liara continues. “Quite the opposite. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that I wish that she didn’t have to build up those walls. All it does is create a false sense of distance between her and the ones she cares about.”

Liara has left her queen unprotected. Speaking of vulnerabilities. “Do you still love her?” Samantha asks after she has captured the enemy queen. She hates her words from the moment that they leave her mouth. “I’m sorry,” she adds in quick apology. “That’s probably a loaded question right now.”

“I no longer love her in a romantic sense.” Liara’s response comes without hesitation. “But I care about her deeply as a comrade and, I hope, still a friend. Which is why I worry about her.”

Their conversation has come full circle now. Samantha isn’t sure what she should make of what has been said. To a certain degree, she understands where Liara is coming from with her statements. But how much of it has been colored by the recent breakup? Has Liara only characterized her as “difficult to love” because their relationship did not succeed? Samantha decides that she won’t let Liara’s words dissuade her from how she feels about Shepard. If the opportunity to become closer to the Commander presents itself, she’s not going to let it slip away. Not because of what she has been told by Shepard’s ex-girlfriend.

She turns her attention back to the chess board. With Liara’s queen out of the way, she moves into position to pin down the king. “Checkmate,” she declares.

She only wishes that it felt more like a victory.


	4. Chapter 4

Commander Shepard becomes the hero to an entire race when she and her team allow for the successful dispersal of the cure for the krogan genophage on Tuchanka. Of course, this victory doesn’t come without loss: Mordin Solus had walked forward to his death to ensure the proper implementation of the cure. “Someone else might have gotten it wrong,” Shepard says, quoting his last words to her at the small memorial service they have on the Normandy when she places his name on the memorial wall on the crew deck.

 _She puts walls up around herself and moves on_. Now more than ever, Samantha understands what Liara had meant when she said that. She hadn’t known the salarian doctor well, other than that she always knew that his work was going well when she could hear him singing “I Am The Very Model of a Scientist Salarian” at the top of his lungs from inside the medbay. Shepard had known him, though, and although she keeps a strong facade in the days following Tuchanka, Samantha wonders if she’s really hurting inside, struggling to accept the sacrifice of one of her crew.

Life on the Normandy continues on, however, and the small flutter of nervous excitement that Samantha experiences every time that Shepard talks to her reminds her that her attraction continues to exist in full force. Maybe she’s imagining it, but Shepard has been coming over to her workstation a lot more often lately. They talk about Shepard’s missions. Life on the ship. Mundane things. Today’s topic is strategy games.

“I have a set made from rose quartz and hematite back home,” Samantha says when Shepard gets her on the subject of chess. “I like the feel of something solid in my hands.”

“Well, now that I know your weakness, we may have to try a game.” Shepard’s response has a distinctly flirtatious tone to it. It’s not the first time she has openly flirted with her, either. As much as Samantha tries to convince herself that these flirtations aren’t necessarily anything serious, a bubble of joy rises inside her.

She laughs nervously. “It’d be more fun than playing EDI,” she says, since EDI is the only one who has time to play against her on a regular basis. “EDI doesn’t sweat.” Immediately after saying this, she internally cringes. Oh, God, is she really talking about sweat right now? There are a dozen sexier things that she could have brought up instead of sweat.

“You sweat playing chess?” Shepard raises her eyebrows in amusement.

“Depends on how much fun we’re having.” Okay, that’s a little better. Suggestive without being too suggestive. It’s certainly a good recovery from the sweat comment.

Shepard gives a brief chuckle in response. Samantha has noticed that the Commander rarely truly laughs. Usually the closest she gets is to laughter is small sounds of amusement, like right now. “Well, I should get back to work,” she says. “I’m serious about wanting to play, though. Send me a reminder or something.”

“Will do,” Samantha agrees. “I’ll talk to you later, Commander.”

She watches Shepard walk away from her, and it takes all of her willpower to avoid checking her out. Innocent flirtation is one thing, but staring at your commanding officer’s rear end steps a little too far over the line of professionalism. It also takes all of her willpower not to send Shepard an email straightaway about when she’d be available for a chess game. She can easily imagine the response that she’d get for taking such immediate action: “Later, Traynor. Remind me about it _later_.”

And so it is indeed later, when she’s between shifts, that Samantha sits in the crew lounge and composes an email to Shepard. Taking a deep breath, she presses the “send” button once she is sure that her request to play chess doesn’t sound too much like proposing a date. Of course, she really shouldn’t expect anything from this invitation. As much as she likes to entertain fantasies of the end result escalating far beyond playing chess, she has to convince herself that it’s not going to turn out that way. Better to go in without any expectations, she decides.

Samantha doesn’t receive any immediate response. Although Shepard is usually prompt at responding to emails, the lack of reply doesn’t surprise Samantha at all. In comparison to “saving the galaxy,” “playing chess with the comm specialist” is likely near the bottom of Shepard’s to-do list. It’s foolish to expect the Commander to have time to accept the invitation right away.

Which is why Samantha is completely surprised later that night when she hears the chirp of her comm indicating an incoming message from Commander Shepard. Not an email--a voice call. Ordinarily, this would indicate a problem that Samantha needs to immediately attend to, and she half-expects Shepard to be on the line with some kind of dire emergency when she answers the call. Instead, she finds something much different.

“Traynor,” Shepard says over the comm. “If you’re not doing anything, I’ve got a few hours free. Would you like to come up?”

Two thoughts immediately enter Samantha’s mind. The first is that Shepard has clearly forgotten that it’s a quarter to midnight, which is not the best time to be inviting people to her cabin. Considering how little sleep she seems to be getting lately, however, it’s likely that she has lost all concept of time. The second thought is that Shepard hasn’t given her nearly enough time to mentally prepare herself for them spending some time off-duty together. In an ideal world, Samantha would have at least a couple of hours to calm the nervous anticipation that is now flooding through her, not a few minutes.

The expectant silence on the other end of the comm connection promptly reminds Samantha that she should give Shepard a response. “Yes, I’m free right now,” she says, trying to sound like she isn’t mentally panicking. “I’ll be right there.”

“I’ll be waiting.” There is nothing openly suggestive or flirtatious in Shepard’s voice, but her response makes Samantha’s stomach flip-flop in a combination of nerves and desire.

Okay, breathe, she tells herself as she retrieves her chessboard from her belongings. It’s not a date. It’s just a friendly game of chess. She should have no expectations whatsoever. As much as she tries to convince herself of these things, however, her heart beats a mile a minute as she takes the elevator up to Deck 1.

“Hey,” Shepard greets her when the door to her cabin opens to let Samantha in. “Glad you could make it.”

“Thanks, er. Thanks for inviting me up,” Samantha manages to stammer out in polite response. She glances around the interior of the cabin. She hasn’t been inside it since the first time that she had met Shepard, and at that point she’d been far too nervous to take note of most of its features. Of course, she is equally nervous this time around, but for entirely different reasons.

“Your cabin is gorgeous,” she says, pushing down her nerves by offering a compliment. “I’ve seen apartments smaller than this.”

“I can give you a tour, if you’d like,” Shepard offers. She gestures to the wall with the aquarium, and when she speaks, her voice has adopted the measured tones of a tour guide. “Over here you’ll find my fish, who are living very happy lives now that they have a VI to regulate their feeding. And here to your right--” She indicates a display case serving as a sort of wall in front of her desk. “--you’ll find my desk and the collection of model ships that I’ve acquired.”

Samantha follows behind her as she walks toward her desk. “And over here you’ll find my pet hamster,” she says, gesturing to the small cage on a shelf on the wall behind her desk.

“I’d never have expected you to have pets in your cabin,” Samantha comments.

“I bought him on the Citadel last year,” Shepard explains. “When I was a kid, I spent most of my time living on ships, and the only pet I was ever allowed to have was a hamster. So when I saw this little guy, I bought him out a sense of nostalgia, I guess.”

The hamster scurries out of its hiding place with a small squeak before retreating. “He’s adorable,” Samantha says. She’s usually more fond of larger animals, like dogs, but she can’t deny that it’s kind of cute that Shepard keeps a small, furry creature in her living quarters.

“And in here you’ll find my private bathroom.” Shepard moves on with the impromptu tour, sliding open a nearby door.

Samantha peers inside, immediately noticing the open area of the shower. “Ah, an actual shower!” she gasps. One of the downsides of living on a ship: private showers are few and far between. “The faucets in the women’s bathroom are crap, by the way,” she continues. Shepard must already know this, though. Having spent most of her life on starships, she’s probably had more than one terrible shower in the crew bathrooms during her lifetime.

Samantha clears her throat with a quiet sound, remember why she’s here in the first place. “In any event, I thought you’d be in the mood to play,” she says. She has completely forgotten that Shepard has been giving her a tour of the cabin. Judging from the way she doesn’t object to the change in topic, Shepard has forgotten too.

“Chess?” she inquires in clarification. A hint of a smile teases the corners of her mouth upward.

“I bought a board on the Citadel. GUI interface, not nearly as much fun as real pieces, but I hoped you’d give me some pointers.” Of course, the idea of Shepard teaching her anything about chess is laughable. Samantha feels like she’s back in school, getting an attractive upperclassman to try to tutor her in a subject that she already knows by heart. (She’d tried that tactic once before when she was sixteen. It hadn’t worked.)

“That’s funny. I figured you’d be more interested in the shower.” Shepard nods over to the open bathroom door.

Samantha opens her mouth and closes it again. Well. This is something that she hasn’t expected. She is fairly certain that it’s not standard protocol for commanding officers to let their subordinates use their shower, so there must be something bigger at play here. Either Shepard is being extremely generous, or she has a particular reason to want Samantha in the shower. Seduction by shower, or something like that.

“I… didn’t realize that was an option,” she says once she has found her voice again.

“It’s an option.” Shepard has her flirtatious voice going again. Unless she’s getting her hopes up again, Samantha is now fairly that Shepard’s intentions lie somewhere within the realm of “seduction by shower.” It’s one of the last tactics that she would have expected Shepard to employ, but she would be an utter fool to turn it down--especially because she’ll get her first proper shower in weeks out of the deal.

“Well, just give me a moment to grab my things.” She places her chess board on Shepard’s desk and departs from the cabin, taking the elevator down to the crew deck. As she stands alone in the elevator, her heart beats even faster than it had done on the way up. Her hands are sweating. How has the situation turned from “playing chess” to “using the Commander’s shower” so quickly? Is this how Shepard seduces all of her subordinates? Did she do this for Liara, too? No, don’t think about that, she tells herself firmly, pushing the asari out of her mind.

Once on the crew deck, she quickly retrieves her towel and everything else that she needs from her bunk. She desperately hopes that she won’t run into anyone on the way back. Going up to Shepard’s cabin to take a shower at almost midnight will surely be met with raised eyebrows from the crew. Unless, of course, Samantha is misreading the situation, and Shepard offering her shower to her comrades is completely normal.

A few minutes later, she stands in Shepard’s cabin once more, unable to think of the proper words to say. “Take as long as you need,” Shepard says, filling the silence with her own words. “We’ll start our game after.”

“Thank you, Commander.”

Once Samantha is safely inside the bathroom, she removes her clothing, placing each discarded item on a nearby countertop. Things that earlier today she’d never have expected to happen: being naked in Commander Shepard’s cabin. Sure, she’s about to take a shower and isn’t even in Shepard’s view right now, but that doesn’t stop the situation from being unexpected.

She turns on the showerhead and runs a hand through the stream of water to check the temperature. She nearly moans at the sensation of hot water running off her fingertips. The water against the rest of her skin warms her body as she moves to stand under the flow of water in the spacious shower. A sigh of contentment escapes from her.

“Ah, hot water and room to stretch,” she says. “I could get lost in here.”

She hears no response from Shepard. Can Shepard even hear her from in here? The cabin is large, but not large enough that her voice would become lost in the space. As Samantha soaps up her body, she decides to test this theory.

“It’s like a week’s worth of stress is washing off,” she continues. “And the timing’s perfect. I was hoping to look nice for someone.” More like _look nice for you_ , but Shepard doesn’t need to know that yet.

She hears Shepard’s voice in immediate response. “Hot date lined up?”

Samantha wonders how long she can continue this flirtation without openly admitting that Shepard is the one who she is talking about. When she has imagined all of the scenarios in which she might end up confessing her feelings for Shepard, doing so while taking a shower is not one of them.

“Hopefully more than just that,” she replies. “I play for keeps.”

“Sounds serious.”

The lather of soap washes off Samantha’s body, gathering at the shower’s drain. “That depends on whether she’s interested.” She places special emphasis on her last two words that she hopes will be enough of a hint that the “she” in question is in fact the young, attractive commanding officer whose shower she happens to be using right now.

Samantha hears the quiet sound of Shepard’s footsteps. Before she fully processes what is going on, Shepard is standing there in front of her in the bathroom.

“She’s interested,” she says in that flirtatious, seductive tone that makes Samantha’s spine tingle. Shepard’s eyes focus upon her, and she realizes that she is standing completely naked in front of Commander Shepard. She has never felt more exposed in her life.

Shepard steps forward to close the distance between them. One of her hands touches Samantha’s dampened cheek with a caress that is softer than what she expects from those rough, callused hands. In a moment of clarity, Samantha questions the situation. She is fairly certain that things are about to progress further than she had ever intended tonight, and a quiet voice in her head suggests that she should back down. But on the other hand, this is _Shepard_. How long has she spent wanting something like this to happen? As much as that tiny voice insists to her that this is entirely inappropriate, Samantha is a woman with needs that she can’t always satisfy on her own. And turning down Commander Shepard of all people? Absolutely preposterous.

It’s unclear which of them moves first, but soon their lips meet. The zipper of Shepard’s sweatshirt digs into Samantha’s skin when she pulls her closer to deepen the kiss. Samantha wants to ask her why she is standing fully clothed under the stream of the shower, but with Commander Shepard’s tongue in her mouth she can’t think straight enough to say anything. The only thought that crosses her mind is that kissing her is as good as she has imagined it.

When they finally break apart, Samantha gives a quiet “Wow” of satisfaction. Her hands trace paths down Shepard’s body, longing to touch the skin covered by her now-soaked clothes.

“Are you going to, er, take these off?” She gently tugs on the zipper of the N7 sweatshirt. “It’s rather unfair, you know.”

“Oh. Right.” A sheepish smile crosses Shepard’s lips. Her wet hair clings to her face, and she runs a hand through her bangs to unstick the pale strands from her forehead. She steps out of the shower and peels off her clothing, revealing the toned muscle of her body underneath. The only thought on Samantha’s mind is _this is Commander Shepard naked in front of me, and she is beautiful._

Shepard rejoins her in the shower, and their lips meet again. They shift position so that Samantha is leaning against the cold wall of the shower, and Shepard braces one hand against the wall for support as she trails a slow, sensuous line down Samantha’s neck and across her collarbone. Samantha lets out a quiet squeak in a stifled cry when Shepard gently nips at her skin.

“Too much?” Shepard asks, stopping momentarily.

“No, that was fine.” If Shepard keeps carrying on like this, Samantha is sure that in the morning she will have marks to show for this encounter. By this point, though, she no longer cares. “I’m not afraid of a little biting, Commander,” she adds, spurred on by the heady sensation of desire.

Shepard gives a throaty chuckle in response. “Good to know.” Her tongue flicks across the same spot on her collarbone. This time, Samantha doesn’t hold back the cry that escapes from her.

Shepard soon pulls away from her by mere inches, carefully hitching Samantha’s right leg over her own hip to draw them even closer together in another kiss. In the small amount of empty space between them, Samantha skims her hands across the tight muscle of Shepard’s stomach before moving upwards to cup around her breasts. Shepard arches into her touch, letting a sigh of pleasure escape into Samantha’s mouth.

“Never thought you’d be so forward in these things, Traynor,” she murmurs once they have withdrawn from the kiss.

“You didn’t think that I’ve spent the last several weeks standing at my workstation daydreaming about something like this happening?” Samantha’s thumbs continue to trace lazy circles around Shepard’s nipples, arousing them to hard nubs. “In case you haven’t noticed, you’re kind of gorgeous.”

“You flatter me way too much.” Shepard brings one hand down to slide up Samantha’s leg, stopping at the curve of her hip. Samantha curls her raised leg around Shepard’s body to increase their intimacy, even though her muscles are starting to quietly protest (why couldn’t it have been Shepard, with her strong soldier legs, in this position?).

It’s not long before she has to untwine her leg from around Shepard, one hand still resting around the soft contours of the other woman’s breast. Shepard’s knee nudges Samantha’s legs apart, and a breath catches in her throat as her fingers run up the inside of her thigh in a tantalizing motion.

“This okay?” Shepard asks as her fingers hover on the brink of dipping between Samantha’s legs.

“Yeah,” she replies, “it’s more than okay, it’s--”

Her words soon give way to a breathy moan when Shepard’s fingers brush against her clit. She pushes her pelvis forward, grinding her hips into the touch that she has not felt from another woman in… God, far too long. Their eyes meet, and the green depths of Shepard’s eyes are even more beautiful than when Samantha first noticed them.

All too soon, however, Shepard moves away from her. A small noise of dismay escapes from Samantha’s throat. “You’re a tease, you know that?” she says.

“Well, believe it or not, even the shower in the captain’s cabin runs out of hot water pretty quickly,” Shepard replies. “Unless you want the mood ruined by the water going cold all of a sudden, I thought it might be better to move this elsewhere.”

“But I haven’t washed my hair yet.” Nice job getting your priorities straight, she tells herself as soon as these words leave her mouth. Here she is, on the verge of having sex with Commander Shepard, and she’s more concerned about finishing her shower.

The sides of Shepard’s mouth quirk up into a smile. “Make it quick.”

“Yes, ma’am.” The response comes automatically, as if she’s responding to any other order that Shepard might give her. She squeezes out shampoo from the bottle and lathers it between her hands before rubbing it into her hair. Shepard stands there watching her with mild amusement as she rinses out the suds.

“I might have to start calling you a clean freak now,” Shepard teases.

“I think you already knew that. My toothbrush costs six thousand credits, remember?”

“Fair enough.” Shepard shuts off the shower and steps out onto the bathroom floor. Water rolls down her skin, dripping onto the tile. She doesn’t stop to dry herself off. Instead, she captures Samantha in a kiss, carefully guiding her out of the bathroom. They leave a trail of water behind them, but neither of them care.

“You’re sopping wet, you know,” Samantha says once she has the chance to speak again. She immediately internally cringes at the unintentional double entendre of her words.

“It’s okay. A little water won’t kill us.”

They have made it to the bed by now. Samantha falls back onto the soft mattress that is much more comfortable than the ones in the crew quarters. Shepard positions herself beside her, trailing a line of kisses across her breasts, down her stomach, at the junction of hip and thigh. She shifts to spread Samantha’s legs apart once more and, surprisingly enough, hesitates before progressing further.

“Just let me know if anything’s too much,” she says. Her words come as soft puffs of breaths against Samantha’s skin.

“Okay,” she replies. By this point, however, Shepard’s presence is so intoxicating that she suspects there won’t ever be such a thing as “too much.”

Shepard dips her head down, her mouth teasing at the sensitive skin between Samantha’s legs. A half-sigh, half-moan escapes from between her lips as she curls her fingers into the blanket in response to the slick feeling of Shepard’s tongue against her skin.

“You’re, ah, going to let me reciprocate things later, right?” she asks, feeling rather selfish that Shepard has been primarily focused on pleasing her. “It only--oh, _God_ \--seems fair, you know.”

“All in good time.” The seductive tone of Shepard’s voice nearly makes Samantha come on the spot. She arches her back with another moan when Shepard touches her lips to her clit. She still half-expects all of this to be a dream, and she’ll wake up in her bunk at any moment.

She doesn’t wake up.

 

* * *

 

“I can’t tell you how much I needed that.” Samantha lies close to Shepard, each of them basking in the quiet glow of post-sex euphoria.

Shepard turns her head slightly to look at her. “Are you using me for my shower?” The hint of a smirk appears on her lips.

“I certainly hope so.” Samantha could definitely get used to taking proper showers on a regular basis. And sleeping with Shepard on a regular basis too, but that’s another issue.

“Well, in that case, it’s yours whenever you like.” Shepard shifts slightly to prop herself on one elbow. Her smirk has transformed itself into a genuine smile.

Samantha murmurs in appreciation. “You’re sweet, you know that?”

“I try.” Two of Shepard’s fingers walk their way up Samantha’s arm in a lazy, idle motion. She wants to stay here in the comfort of Shepard’s bed forever, but the glowing interface of the clock near the bed tells her that she should return to the crew deck and get some sleep. She’d rather do the proverbial walk of shame from Shepard’s cabin at this hour than at six o’clock in the morning when far more members of the crew will be awake and wondering why exactly she has spent the night in the Commander’s cabin.

She gets up from the bed, leaving Shepard’s fingers touching empty air. “Leaving already?” Shepard asks. “You’re welcome to stay here for the night.”

“I would, but all I have here are my shower things,” Samantha replies. She automatically searches the floor surrounding the bed for her clothes before remembering that they’re in the bathroom. She walks over to retrieve them. “And before you say that I can just use your toothbrush or something, remember what you said about me being a clean freak. Do you know how many germs are on your toothbrush?”

“That’s funny.” Shepard’s voice drifts into the bathroom as Samantha takes her clothing from where she left it and redresses herself. “Considering some of the places that you had your mouth earlier, I thought you wouldn’t be concerned about using my toothbrush.”

She is glad that Shepard can’t see her blush from where she stands inside the bathroom. “That’s--those are two entirely different things, Commander.”

Once she is fully dressed again, she studies herself in the mirror. Her hair is disheveled from lying on Shepard’s bed, and so she uses her towel to smooth down the still-damp strands. After ensuring that she has taken everything that belongs to her out of the bathroom, she returns to the main area of the cabin. She spots her chessboard sitting exactly where she has left it on Shepard’s desk.

“And we didn’t even get to play chess,” she laments, scooping it up and stacking it on top of everything else in her arms.

“Another time, maybe.” Shepard walks over to join her. She has covered herself up with a robe that, sure enough, has a tiny N7 insignia on it. Samantha almost laughs. Shepard’s collection of N7-related items is unending.

“In any event, I had a good time tonight.” She kisses Shepard in a brief farewell. “Let me know the next time your shower’s free.”

“Will do.” A pause, and then Shepard continues with, “Well, have a good night, Traynor. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

“You too, Commander. Good night.” Samantha gives one last lingering glance at Shepard before departing from the cabin, still hardly daring to believe what has transpired tonight.


	5. Chapter 5

Samantha’s happiness about finally having something come out of her feelings for Shepard is short-lived. Two days after their encounter, the galaxy continues its downward spiral toward hell. What starts off as a routine trip to the Citadel at the request of one of the councilors soon turns into a nightmare, the details of which Samantha hears second-hand as Shepard updates those left behind on the ship: Cerberus taking over the Citadel. The assassin Kai Leng fatally wounding a drell who had been one of Shepard’s old comrades. Councilor Udina staging a coup. Shepard having to look down the barrel of Major Alenko’s gun as she tries to convince him of Udina’s plans. Shepard shooting Udina. The whole situation is a mess.

In the days that follow, Samantha barely sees Shepard at all apart from helping her set up all of the calls that she needs to make and giving normal reports on her work. Part of her is disappointed that they haven’t been able to fall back into their routine of casual conversation and flirtation at Samantha’s workstation, but she immediately pushes these selfish thoughts out of her mind the second that she thinks them. Let Shepard save the day and fix everyone’s problems like she always does, and then they can figure out exactly what now exists between them.

Even after some of the immediate consequences of the coup have been dealt with, however, Shepard still doesn’t talk to her about anything that isn’t strictly business. Samantha tries to find other ways to keep herself occupied to take her mind off this worrying detail. She downloads chess puzzles onto the terminal that she works at. She chats with Diana Allers over the comm. She playfully threatens EDI whenever she discovers that she has been cheating in the chess matches that they play together. But with every unsatisfying shower that she takes in the crew quarters, with the water too cold and the pressure too weak, she worries that her lack of interaction with Shepard may not be due to the Commander’s increased workload, but rather something to do with her.

As always, Samantha turns to EDI for help. “Do you know what Commander Shepard has been up to today?” she asks, trying to sound like her question is merely an innocent concern and not the panic of “Commander Shepard and I slept together and we haven’t really had a chance to talk about it since.”

“According to my logs,” EDI replies, “Shepard awoke from four hours and twenty-seven minutes of sleep at 0730 this morning. She then proceeded to perform a quick physical regimen, take a shower, and eat breakfast before officially declaring herself on duty at 0815. Although she has some datapads that she needs to consult and report upon, she initially chose to disregard those and check on the progress of her crew instead. She spent a particularly long time in conversation with Major Alenko in the starboard observation lounge from approximately 0858 to 0921. After some friendly banter with Officer Vakarian in the main battery at 0947, she returned to her cabin to check over the datapads that she had initially disregarded. That is where she currently remains.”

Samantha doesn’t quite know what to say to this very precise recap of Shepard’s morning thus far. “Oh, er. I didn’t need that much detail, but thanks, regardless.”

“You are welcome, Specialist Traynor.” After a pause on the other end of the comm line, EDI says, “I have noticed that you and Shepard are not engaging in flirtatious behavior as often as you have on previous occasions. Has the source of the sexual tension between the two of you been sorted out?”

“EDI!” Samantha whispers indignantly. The CIC isn’t exactly bustling right now, but because this is the middle of most people’s morning shifts, anyone could be passing through. “This is not the time for something like that!”

“I apologize. I was merely curious. Jeff seems to be of the opinion that you two need to, quote, ‘just do each other already.’”

“Oh, dear God.” Samantha groans in embarrassment. “Listen, I’ll share all the gossip you want later. All I wanted to know is whether the Commander is busy or not.”

“My apologies, Samantha. I will let you return to your work.”

The comm call comes to an end. Samantha stares down at the screen of the terminal in front of her, all of the text on the screen running together in one glowing blur. So Shepard has indeed been busy this morning--but if she has been checking in on all of the crew, then why has the only interaction between the two of them been a brief good morning and an inquiry of whether any important messages have come in? What happened to the leisurely chats that they used to have? Is all of that over now that they have slept together?

Therefore, during her break Samantha decides that she needs to initiate a conversation with Shepard about what has happened. As uncomfortable as it might be to breach the topic of “so we have sex once, the galaxy continues to fall apart, and now there’s nothing?”, Samantha doesn’t think she can go one more day with their situation steeped in uncertainty. At this point, having no answers is almost worse than the fear that something has gone wrong between the two of them.

With a deep breath of preparation, she places the call through to Shepard’s comm. “Commander,” she says, trying to keep her voice steady and confident. “I was wondering if we could find some time to talk privately later. There’s something important that I think we should discuss.”

“Okay,” Shepard agrees. “You’re on your break now, right? I’m not doing much at the moment, so if you want to come up…”

“Oh. Er, I guess I could do that.” Samantha hasn't anticipated discussing the matter with Shepard so soon. She thought that she'd have at least a little bit of time to plan out the precise details of what she's going to say. If she doesn't talk to Shepard right now, though, she has no idea when she'll have the chance to do so again. She has little choice in the matter, really.

“Good. I’ll see you up here in a few minutes, then?”

“Yes. Thank you, Commander.” Samantha disconnects from the call. Deciding that she shouldn’t keep Shepard waiting, she stands up from where she has been sitting in the crew lounge and heads for the elevator. She is so lost in her thoughts of what to say to Shepard that she almost collides with Liara when the latter exits from the elevator.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Liara!” she exclaims. “I didn’t see you.”

The stack of datapads that Liara is carrying wobbles a little. She places a hand on the stack to balance it. “Don’t worry about it,” she assures Samantha. Her shining blue eyes regard her with concern. “You look preoccupied.”

“Oh, no, it’s nothing,” Samantha lies. She’s certainly not going to tell Liara that she’s about to talk to Shepard about the disappointing aftermath of what is increasingly looking like a one-night stand. Or maybe Liara will sympathize, having experienced her own relationship problems with Shepard. “What have you been up to?” she asks, deciding to change the subject.

Liara’s expression darkens. “It seems that just when I convince myself that Javik cannot become even more insufferable, he finds another way to insult my intelligence.”

Samantha makes a murmur of sympathy. She hasn’t had much opportunity to interact with the Prothean that Shepard had found in stasis on Eden Prime several weeks previously, but in her conversations with Liara she has concluded that Javik considers himself superior to every other species as a general rule. She can’t imagine how frustrating it must be for Liara to finally meet a member of the long-extinct species to which she has dedicated her life’s work, only to be met with hostility. It makes Samantha glad that she works in a field where the subjects of her research aren’t able to talk back.

“Where are you headed?” Liara asks her, nodding to the elevator behind her.

“Up,” she replies in vague response. Let Liara think that she’s returning to the CIC. Of course, Samantha realizes how quickly this lie of omission falls apart when she remembers that Liara would know that she’s in the middle of her break right now. “To Commander Shepard’s cabin,” she adds in defeated clarification. “She, er, has some things to discuss with me, and she’s been up there doing work all day, so that’s why she…” She trails off there, pointing upward in a weak attempt to let her actions finish her sentence for her. She’s not sure why she is so reluctant to tell Liara the truth. It’s probably out of some kind of guilt for sleeping with Shepard.

“Of course.” Liara nods in response. “Well, I won’t hold you up any longer. I’ll talk to you later, Samantha.”

With a brief farewell to Liara, Samantha enters the elevator, taking it up to Deck 1. She wonders if she will ever be able to enter Shepard’s living quarters without agonizing over her nerves on the way up. She would have thought that after their night together, those nerves would have dissipated, but that was before everything became a mess.

The door to Shepard’s cabin shines with a green light, indicating that it’s not locked. She sucks in a deep breath, letting the air out slowly as the door slides open. Shepard sits at her desk, a haphazard pile of datapads towering in front of her. One hand twists its way through her hair as she pores over the document in her hands.

Samantha clears her throat to get her attention. “Commander?”

Shepard swivels her chair around to face her. “Traynor. You said you wanted to talk?” She touches a finger to the interface of the datapad that she is studying to scroll the document downward.

“Yes, ma’am.” Samantha shifts her weight from one foot to another in an uneasy motion.

“Just give me a minute.” Her eyes continue to scan the datapad. A slight frown rests on her lips, and her brow furrows in concentration. She reaches for a scrap of paper behind her and scribbles down a note or two before setting the document aside and standing up from the chair.

“I had EDI forward me all of the information from the war assets files,” Shepard explains as they make their way over to the couch on the other side of the room. “I thought it would be easier for me to manage it all from here as I make my reports rather than having to keep running back and forth to the War Room to consult. I didn’t think about the sheer amount of information that would involved. Or maybe EDI is being overly thorough.”

They sit down. Samantha is especially careful to keep a professional distance between them. In her head, she rehearses what exactly she is going to say to Shepard. None of the words that she can think of seem right.

“Anyway,” Shepard continues, “Councilor Valern just sent confirmation that the Salarian Third Fleet has officially pledged its support to the war effort as thanks for saving his life during the coup. After thinking that we’d lost the opportunity for significant salarian support after refusing to sabotage the genophage cure, it gives us a much larger boost than I expected.”

Samantha twists her fingers nervously in her lap. She hasn’t even _asked_ to hear about what Shepard had been working on, and yet here she is, listening to Shepard talk about her work when they have more important things to discuss. Perhaps it’s to be expected that she would have the war effort on her mind after looking at documents for the majority of the morning. Because of her current frustration at Shepard’s actions, though, Samantha can’t help but be irritated by this behavior.

“Are we ever going to talk about that night that we had together?” she blurts out, disregarding all of the careful finesse with which she has intended to introduce that topic.

Shepard stares at her, mouth half-open in surprise at the words that have burst from Samantha’s lips. She doesn’t say anything in response, and so Samantha takes that as her cue to continue.

“I know that you’ve been busy and that everything’s been an enormous mess since the coup,” she presses on. “But you still haven’t said a thing to me about what that night meant for us, and I--” She almost says “I deserve to have an answer to that,” but that sounds too demanding of her. Instead, she says, “I want to know where we stand.”

Shepard hesitates. She chews on the corner of her bottom lip in a restless, nervous motion. Samantha is fairly certain that this is the first time she has ever seen her show any kind of nerves. _Walls_ , she remembers.

“I’m sorry that we haven’t had a chance to discuss that yet,” Shepard says finally. “Maybe I haven’t handled the situation as well as I could have. But with so much going on, I guess it’s been too easy for me to let things slip through the cracks.”

“I understand.” Samantha’s words are a mere courtesy, however. A heavy weight forms in her stomach at the unspoken implication of Shepard’s response. If whatever exists between the two of them is something that is important to her, then it’s obviously not important enough for her to immediately address. If Shepard _really_ cares about her, about _them_ , then she wouldn’t have let so much time pass before talking about the night that they had spent together. The weight that has settled inside her quickly takes shape into the more concrete emotions of anger and frustration. Her hands grip the edge of the couch, perhaps a little too tightly.

“Actually,” she says, changing her mind, “I _don’t_ understand.” She keeps her gaze directly upon Shepard, knowing that eye contact will make her words all the more effective. “If you intended for that night to only be a one-time thing, then that’s your decision. But you could have at the very least shown me the respect of letting me know that before now.” Her legs tremble, and she has to consciously keep them visibly still. She can hardly believe that she is speaking to Commander Shepard like this. “Because regardless of what it meant to you, it meant something to me. Because I… I care about you, Commander. A lot.”

The last words tumble out of her mouth before she has a chance to prevent herself from saying them. This is the first time that she has truly vocalized her feelings for Shepard. During the night that they had spent together, their actions had been fueled more by physical attraction, not by any kind of mutual emotions. She’s not sure what kind of answer she expects in response to her confession, but all that matters is that she has done her part. Now it’s up to Shepard to put forth her perspective of what exists between them.

Shepard lets out a slow exhale. “Listen, Traynor. I’m sorry if I’ve seemed distant about all of this. I don’t like to think of myself as the kind of person who sleeps with someone without having it mean anything. But…”

“But?” Samantha prompts her. She doesn’t like the sound of that word.

Again Shepard hesitates. She puts a hand to her forehead, twisting the shorter strands of hair that form her bangs as she kneads her fingers against her skin. “Like I said, I’ve been under a lot of stress lately,” she says, keeping her eyes averted from Samantha. “Everything about this war--the lives of trillions of beings throughout the galaxy are dependent on my actions. Most of the time, I can convince myself that I’ve been making the right choices. But then things always go wrong, and I can’t help but think ‘What if I’m not doing enough?’ So…” She sighs. “I don’t mean to hurt you, Traynor. But I have a lot going on right now, and so the thought of, you know, _us_  hasn’t been one of my priorities. And I don’t want to tell you that something can happen between us when I know deep down that I can’t give you everything that you would expect from a relationship. The night that we had together was great, don’t get me wrong. But sometimes I wonder if I should have even let it happen.”

“Then why did you let it happen in the first place?” Samantha’s response leaves her lips before she has time to think about what she’s saying. She immediately regrets her words, but Shepard’s rejection has only fueled the fires of anger and frustration that burn within her.

Shepard moves her hand away from her forehead. Samantha realizes how exhausted she looks, bearing the expression of a woman who has the weight of an entire galaxy on her shoulders. In those deep green eyes she sees the Shepard that the world rarely glimpses: the one who doubts herself in moments of uncertainty. The one who shows weakness. And Samantha sees the weakness in Shepard’s expression as plain as day.

Shepard takes a deep breath before giving her answer, not quite looking at Samantha as she does so. “I made a mistake.”

The quiet words hang in the air, echoing throughout the space of Shepard’s cabin. The force of them punches Samantha straight in the gut, sending her reeling.

“Is that all I am to you?” She hates the way that her voice wavers as it catches in her throat. “A mistake?”

Shepard doesn’t say anything at first. She leans forward, resting her head in her hands. The silence that fills the room is oppressive, forcing them to confront the issue in front of them.

“No.” Her eventual reply comes out muffled. She lifts her head, finally turning her eyes upon Samantha once more. “No. I didn’t mean that. It’s just… I have a lot going on right now, and I need some time to sort everything out. And while I do that, I don’t think that this--” She makes a vague gesture between the two of them. “--should happen. I’m sorry, Traynor.”

Samantha wants to say “I understand.” She wants to acknowledge that Shepard is completely justified for wanting to put sexual and/or romantic entanglements on the back burner while she focuses on the war. But in the end, she _doesn’t_ understand, and so all she says to Shepard is a brusque response of “Thank you for your time, Commander” before she stands up from the couch and walks out of the cabin.

Her eyes burn as she passes through the door, but she doesn’t let herself cry.


	6. Chapter 6

Samantha tries to not let herself get too upset about what has happened between her and Shepard. The galaxy is in the middle of a war, after all, and sitting around sulking about how Shepard doesn’t want a relationship with her is one of the most selfish things she can think of doing. The only thing that would be more selfish would be requesting to leave the Normandy so that she doesn’t have to deal with the pain of looking at Shepard and thinking about what could have been. But the galaxy needs her here, and so she doesn’t even entertain the notion of leaving the ship. Not over something so minor in comparison to all the other terrible things happening across the galaxy.

Unfortunately, having to continue to interact with Shepard for business purposes makes Samantha’s life all the more difficult. On prior occasions when she has tried to get over her feelings for someone, she has liked to put as much distance between her and the other person as possible. Having to see Shepard on a daily basis, however, puts a definite wrinkle in that plan. Yet another reason why falling for Shepard was the opposite of a good idea, she thinks with a rueful sigh as the Commander walks away from her after a routine status check. It doesn’t help that thoughts of her continue to creep their way unbidden into Samantha’s mind, spreading through her like a poison before she can dismiss them.

Several days after her relationship with Shepard ended before it had ever really begun, the Normandy makes a visit to the Citadel for the first time since the coup. At first, Samantha’s plans are to stay aboard the ship as she often does when she doesn’t have any pressing need to purchase anything. However, when she finds out that even Joker is leaving his beloved ship behind for a few hours of relaxation, she decides that she may need some time away from the Normandy as well. To seal the deal even further, Diana Allers offers to go out shopping with her. “You look like you could use some retail therapy” is the reporter’s reasoning when Samantha inquires why this is necessary.

She doesn’t need much convincing in the end, though. She likes spending time with Diana, who, like her, is a mostly ordinary person who ended up among the Normandy’s eccentric (but no less talented) crew. The only difference is that Diana actually chose to come aboard the ship of her own desires, whereas Samantha has only ended up there through a combination of circumstances outside of her control.

As it turns out, a couple of hours of leisurely shopping is a good way to take her mind off Shepard. It has been too long since she has been out with a friend like this, and she is amazed at how far away the war is to most of the people on the Citadel. Even though the damage that the station sustained during the coup are still under repair, most of the beings that Samantha sees are doing nothing more than going about their daily lives. She imagines that she’d be doing a similiar thing if she was working in the labs and not on the ship commanded by the biggest hope for the galaxy.

The illusion of nothing being wrong, however, fades quickly by the time they return to where the Normandy is docked to drop off their purchases. “So,” Diana says, “are you going to tell me about what has you looking so down lately, Sam?”

Diana is the only one on the Normandy who calls her that, the name primarily used by her family and friends back home. There are a few on the ship who call her Samantha, but to everyone else, she’s Traynor. Shepard hadn’t even used her first name when they were in bed together, although to be fair Samantha wouldn’t have even dreamed about using Shepard’s first name in that situation either. Nobody calls Shepard by her first name, and Samantha wouldn’t have even known it were it not attached to all of her formal communications.

“It’s nothing,” she replies in response to Diana’s question. “Just general stress and not sleeping well.” The “not sleeping” part is true, at least. Restless nights are likely normal for almost everyone on the Normandy, though.

“If you say so.” Diana sounds doubtful.

“Seriously. I’m fine. I’m glad you convinced me to not stay holed up on the ship today.” Samantha smiles, a largely forced gesture. She wishes that she could tell Diana the truth about everything that has happened, but she doesn’t want the story to spread. It’s not that she doesn’t trust Diana. She just doesn’t like the idea of telling a reporter details about Shepard’s love life.

Diana’s comm beeps. “Well, looks like we’re going to have to part ways here,” she says. “Alliance News Network business. I didn’t even _mention_ that I was on the Citadel, but it looks like they found out anyway and want me to stop by the headquarters here. What are you going to do?”

“Liara says that she’ll be at the Presidium near the market for another hour or so. I might go meet up with her.” It has been a while since she and Liara have had the time to have any significant conversion with each other, and so spending some time with her definitely sounds like a good use of her remaining time off. It’s certainly a better course of action than going back aboard the ship and moping about Shepard.

Once she has exchanged farewells with Diana, she makes tracks toward the Presidium Commons area, where sure enough she finds Liara lingering in the Meridian Marketplace. “Have you been enjoying your time off?” Liara asks after greeting her warmly.

“Yeah. I did some shopping to help me try to keep my mind off what’s been going on lately.” Samantha leans against the railing next to where Liara stands. “What about you?”

“I spent some time at Apollo’s.” Liara nods over to a cafe located down the street. “My father is a bartender there. We have only recently became acquainted with each other, but she likes to know how I’m doing straight from my mouth rather than from the other sources that she has.”

The use of female pronouns to refer to Liara’s father confuses Samantha until she realizes that Liara’s “father” must be an asari as well. “It must be nice to see family, though,” she says. “The only contact I have with my family lately is through email. Maybe a call every now and then, if I’m lucky.”

Liara murmurs in assent. “After believing that I had no family left after my mother’s passing three years ago, it’s nice to have a sense of family again. Even if my father can be blunt about most things.” She rests her hands on the railing, looking out at the greenery in front of her. “I also had the opportunity to speak to Shepard,” she continues. “I believe it was the first non-business conversation that we’ve had since our relationship came to an end.”

Of course Liara has to bring up Shepard. “How, er, how did that go?” Samantha asks, trying hard to act like the mention of Shepard isn’t something that grabs hold of her heart and twists.

“It went better than I expected, to be honest. We didn’t talk for long, since she was on her way to meet Kaidan for lunch, but it made me realize how much I’ve missed her conversations. Even when they involve her talking about how she and Garrus went to the top of the Presidium for target practice.” Liara gives a small sigh of exasperation.

“How did they not get in trouble for that?” Samantha would have never expected to hear that Shepard has such a rebellious streak.

“Probably through some combination of her Spectre authority and his general disregard for most regulations.” Liara laughs. “Shepard looked happier than I’ve seen her in weeks when she was telling me about the look on Garrus’s face when she hit all of her marks. I never realized how much I missed her smile.” She allows herself a brief moment of nostalgia before continuing on. “I suppose our conversation proves that there is still hope that we will remain close friends, even though from what I’ve heard, maintaining a friendship with a past bondmate is often not as easy as it appears.”

A brief silence passes between them. Liara shifts uneasily from one foot to another, additional words hovering unspoken between her lips.

“May I ask you something?” she inquires. “You don’t have to give an answer right now if the matter is too personal. But has something happened between you and Shepard?”

Samantha’s mouth goes dry. “What do you mean?” she replies, trying to keep her tone even.

“When I mentioned her, you looked pained. Communication between the two of you has been strained lately as well. Of course, it’s probably none of my business. But having gone through my own emotional problems with her, I can recognize the signs fairly well.”

Why does Liara have to be so observant? Maybe it’s an asari thing. Or perhaps the rumors about her being an information broker are true, and she is asking about something that she in fact already knows. Either way, Samantha doesn’t want to discuss her problems here in the middle of the Presidium.

“Oh, it’s nothing to worry about, really,” she replies, trying and failing to make her voice sound unconcerned.

“Of course.” Liara nods in her understanding. “Well, if you ever want to talk, let me know. We’re overdue for another chess match, after all.”

“Definitely. I’ll see you later, Liara.” Without much more of a farewell, Samantha departs, not entirely sure whether she has a destination of where to go next. It’s too soon to go back to the Normandy, since very few people had been aboard when she and Diana had dropped off their purchases. What she really needs is something to keep her mind off Shepard, but when everyone around her can’t go five seconds without talking about the Commander, it looks like she’ll be better off finding something to do by herself.

She starts with a leisurely walk through the Presidium, taking in the sights. Prior to joining the Normandy’s crew, she’d never had the opportunity to come to the Citadel before, and the sheer diversity of life and activity on the station awes her. Most of her time has been spent in human-dominant environments--Horizon, Earth, the Alliance--and so it is both strange and exciting to be surrounded by all of the other alien races in the galaxy. It’s a prime location for people-watching. Or being-watching. Whichever.

Samantha is passing by Apollo’s Cafe when she catches a glimpse of Shepard sitting at one of the outdoor tables with Major Alenko. Even from a distance she sees that Shepard is smiling and laughing-- _really_ laughing, not those brief murmurs of amusement that she is used to hearing from her. Samantha is about to continue walking by, but what she sees next stops her dead in her tracks.

Alenko leans in close to Shepard, speaking so that no one around them can hear. Whatever he says makes Shepard smile in response. He reaches across the table to take hold of her hand, running his thumb gently across her knuckles. Samantha immediately knows that the gesture is not merely platonic. In the time that she has spent with Shepard, she has determined that the Commander is not exactly a touchy-feely kind of person outside of sexual activity. She’d never hold hands with someone who is only a friend, and yet here she is, tightening her grip around Major Alenko’s hand and leaning in to kiss his cheek like it’s nothing at all.

The gesture cuts straight through Samantha’s core, bisecting her stomach as her metaphorical guts spill out onto the ground of the Presidium. This can’t be happening right now. It can’t be Shepard who is sitting at that table being romantic with Major Alenko. It has to be someone who happens to look like her. A convincing body double, or perhaps a clone. Samantha closes her eyes and opens them again, hoping that the Shepard she sees is only an illusion. No matter what she does, however, the image does not go away.

Samantha’s feet carry her away from the scene without her brain telling her to move. She doesn’t really have a destination in mind; all she knows is that she needs to get away from outside Apollo’s before she storms up to Commander Shepard and demands to know what the hell is going on. Shepard had _told_ her that she is currently too busy and stressed to develop a relationship with her, and yet now she has every reason to believe that she is instead pursuing a relationship with Alenko. Has Shepard lied to her? Was all of that a way to avoid having to say that she possibly has feelings for someone else? If she and Alenko are indeed together, how long has passed since something started between them? The idea of Shepard thinking about him during their time together makes Samantha feel even sicker. She can’t deny that there have been times that she has wondered whether Shepard has residual feelings for Liara, but she hadn’t even considered that Shepard’s constant worries about Alenko are what she should have been more concerned about.

In hindsight, though (and Samantha curses the accuracy of hindsight), she should have noticed the evidence of something more than friendship existing between the two. She had witnessed all of the correspondences between them when Alenko had been in the hospital, and now that she thinks about it, Shepard has sent more emails to him than anyone else. The timing of when Shepard had said that nothing else should happen between her and Samantha is also suspicious. It had been after the coup, which coincidentally was when Alenko had officially rejoined the Normandy’s crew. In addition, Shepard has been spending an awful lot of time with him as of late, which would certainly allow for a budding relationship to further develop. Samantha has really been a fool to not suspect anything.

Her footsteps eventually bring her to the outside of the Purgatory Bar, the only place to get a drink in the Presidium area that she knows of (apart from Apollo’s, of course). The deafening beats of the music inside the building pound in her ears as she enters. Her first instinct is to go straight for the alcohol, but the burn of unshed tears in her eyes instead takes her to the relative privacy of the women’s restroom. She isn’t going to find any privacy on the Normandy, so she might as well get all of her emotions out now where hopefully none of the crew will see her.

She shuts herself inside one of the stalls and sits down on the toilet, letting her tears spill forth as she slumps forward to rest her head in her hands. She hates the tears that dampen her skin. People are dying across the galaxy right now, fighting for their lives against the Reaper invasions, and yet here she is, crying over Commander Shepard. With so much else going on, she shouldn’t let herself weep over a broken heart like this. But rational thought doesn’t win out in this situation, and so she remains in the stall for some time, quietly letting out all of the sadness, frustration, and anger that hits her in full force as she realizes that she never even had a chance with Shepard.

Eventually, once her tears have subsided, she leaves the stall and stands in front of the sink. Red-rimmed eyes stare back at her in the mirror, and so she splashes some cold water on her face to try to hide the evidence that she has been crying. Once she has accepted that only time will cause the red blotches on her cheeks to fade, she leaves the bathroom with a deep, calming breath, ready to pursue the less healthy option of letting alcohol numb her emotional pain.

Due to the time that she spent as a bartender to earn some extra money during university, Samantha knows what kind of drinks will lead to various levels of intoxication. Right now, however, she doesn’t care about details like that. Instead, she asks for the strongest human drink available. She is careful to specify “human drink,” because although she has heard rumors that Commander Shepard has done shots of ryncol before, Samantha suspects that, lacking a Cerberus-rebuilt liver, she won’t fare as well against krogan alcohol.

The turian bartender gives her a doubtful look, as if he is having second thoughts about serving strong alcohol to a small-framed woman who shows signs of recent distress. He pours Samantha a drink anyway, pushing the glass toward her without a word. Samantha swiftly downs the drink, the alcohol burning in her throat as she swallows. She coughs, her eyes streaming. She has no idea what she drank, but according to the taste it is probably some kind of vodka. As much as she wants to continue to dull her still-lingering emotions, she doesn’t ask for another drink. Instead, she stares down at her empty glass with a morose expression, trying not to think about Shepard and Alenko.

“Hey, Traynor. Didn’t think I’d find you here.” The familiar sound of Joker’s voice interrupts her thoughts as he approaches the bar. Samantha turns to acknowledge him, but doesn’t quite look him in the eye. “Damn, you’re looking a little worse for wear,” he continues. “What brings you to the bar in the middle of the day?”

“I could be asking you the same thing,” Samantha replies, deliberately dodging the question.

“Just having some drinks with EDI.” Joker’s smile is broader than she has ever seen it. “She offered to get the next round, but I figured I’d be the gentleman. Even if some of the dancing we did earlier makes me feel like my legs are about to fall off.” He sits down at the bar next to her. “But that doesn’t tell me why you’re sitting here with that look on your face.”

She might as well find some way to broadcast what is on her mind to avoid having these kinds of conversations with people. Perhaps a t-shirt with some kind of witty slogan. “I Slept With Commander Shepard and All I Got Was this Stupid Broken Heart” has a certain ring to it.

Her response spills out, helped by the alcohol that she has consumed. “Because Commander Shepard is a bitch.” The muttered words almost sound like blasphemy, but they accurately describe Samantha’s current thoughts.

“Jeez, what’d she do to piss you off?” Joker laughs, and Samantha wants to scream at him that it’s not funny. “You’re like the leader of the Shepard Hero Worship Squad. Second only to Vega, probably.”

She wonders whether she should tell Joker about what she saw. He already knows that she has feelings for Shepard, and so he would immediately know why seeing Shepard and Alenko together would be so distressing to her. He has also known both of them since their time on the Normandy three years ago, which could help shed some light on how something like this came to happen.

She takes a deep breath before speaking. “Did you know that there’s something going on between Commander Shepard and Major Alenko? Something… romantic?”

“Between the Commander and Kaidan?” A thoughtful frown crosses Joker’s expression. “Really? Must be a new development. But what does that have to do with--oh.” He breaks off. “Right. Because you’re totally into her or whatever. Sorry, that must really suck.” He gives her a sympathetic smile that does not comfort her.

“So you didn’t know about it?” she asks. It must be a _very_ new development, then. Joker is usually up-to-date with everything that happens on the Normandy, mostly due to the amount of time that he spends with EDI, whose figurative eyes are all over the ship. She’s honestly surprised that neither of them know that she has slept with Shepard.

“Well, I knew that Kaidan had a thing for Shepard during his first tour on the Normandy,” says Joker. “It was totally obvious. He followed her around like a puppy. But she ended up hooking up with Liara instead, and then the Collectors hit and she was dead for two years. And then he was a major dick to her when he found out that she was alive and working with Cerberus. Well, more like a _commander_ dick back then, if we’re being technical.” If his bad joke is intended to cheer her up, he is successful, because she smiles in spite of herself. “But man, I didn’t know that something actually came out of all of that. I thought that Kaidan wouldn’t have been willing to go against the fraternization regs. Good for them, I guess.” He hesitates before adding, “But just so you know, EDI and I were totally pulling for you and Shepard to get together. Sorry things don’t look like they’ll work out.” He gives her an affectionate pat on the shoulder. “Buy you another drink to help you drown your sorrows?”

“No,” Samantha replies. Her last drink still burns in her throat. “I think I’m all right. Thanks for the offer, though.”

“Well, uh, if you need anything else, just let me know. I’m not really good at this whole ‘comforting people’ thing, but I’ve been told I’m good at cheering people up.”

“Thanks, Joker.” As reluctant as she has been to talk about Shepard, she’s glad that she has talked to Joker about what's on her mind. His awkward attempts at making her feel better have helped her calm down a little, even if she is far from completely okay. “I never thought that you’d end up being so nice at a time like this.”

“You say that like I’m usually a huge asshole.” He laughs. “Guess it’s something of a big brother instinct. I’ve got a baby sister back home,” he adds in further explanation. “She’s just a kid. Fourteen or fifteen, maybe. I’ve lost track. Anyway, I’ve been thinking about her a lot lately with the war going on and everything. Makes me a little more protective of people as a side effect, I guess.”

Samantha makes a murmur of acknowledgement. “I think I’ll be okay for now,” she says. “You should get back to EDI.”

“Yeah, probably a good idea.” Joker casts a look back at the table where EDI sits. “I’ll see you later, Traynor. And hey--try to keep your chin up, all right?”

Samantha nods. She pays for her drink before leaving the bar, and although the heavy weight of heartbreak continues to burden her, her steps are not as heavy when she returns to the Normandy.


	7. Chapter 7

Samantha’s steps for getting over someone are less clear-cut than her steps for realizing her feelings for someone. The circumstances that lead her to trying to leave behind her feelings differ each time depending on the situation, but the two tactics that she tends to rely on the most are distance and distraction. In terms of getting over Commander Shepard, she is already quite familiar with both courses of action. Distance, as she has already acknowledged, is difficult to come by when she is working alongside Shepard on a warship. Distractions, however, are much easier to find, and in the time that passes after she is forced to accept that the Commander’s feelings lie with someone else, Samantha has become an expert in distracting herself.

She plays a lot of chess against whoever is willing to play, but she has also started to participate in the poker games that Lieutenant Vega often organizes, which usually include Lieutenant Cortez and a rotating roster of whoever else happens to be free at the time. Samantha is not as good at cards as she is at strategy games, but even after a disastrous first game she has been gradually improving. Unfortunately, she soon discovers that she has to wisely choose when to participate in a game, because Major Alenko frequently joins in as well. Playing poker isn’t much of a distraction for her when the person who took Shepard from her is sitting right next to her.

Tonight’s poker game is a small crowd, consisting only of her, Vega, and Cortez. They were originally supposed to be joined by Ken and Gabby from down in engineering, but they’d had to cancel at the last minute. Samantha suspects that this is due to the recent arrival of one of Shepard’s old comrades, a quarian machinist who has apparently taken offense to the way that the human engineers have been running things in her absence. From what she has heard, there has been a lot of overtime work in engineering as a result.

“So you hear the latest rumors?” Vega asks as he deals out the cards. “Apparently most nights Kaidan hasn’t been coming back to his bunk. Sounds like someone’s getting laid.”

Samantha does her best to ignore how her insides go cold at Vega’s words. “Maybe he’s been too busy to sleep,” she suggests, picking up the cards that she has received.

“Ha! Look at our naive little comm specialist.” Vega laughs. “You know what I’m talking about, hey, Esteban?”

“I don’t know, I might have to side with Traynor here,” Cortez replies. “I heard that his dad had been fighting on Earth and was declared MIA. That kind of thing leads to a lot of sleepless nights.”

“Or, you know, he could totally be banging the Commander.” Vega looks at them expectantly, as if he is anticipating a reaction from them. Samantha only stares down at her cards, pretending that this conversation isn’t happening. “C’mon, I can’t be the only one who’s noticed the obvious sexual tension between those two. They’re practically on the verge of jumping each other’s bones out in the field.”

“Do you have to put it so crudely?” Samantha asks, her eyes focused on her cards. All she has for worthwhile cards is a pair of fives. The highest card value she has is a nine, so she should hang onto that along with her fives and aim for a two pair or three of a kind. Maybe a full house if she’s lucky. It may not end up being a stellar hand, but she can still hope that Vega and Cortez will do worse.

“I don’t see it,” says Cortez. “Besides, I heard that the Commander is only interested in women.”

“Man, seriously? Now _that_ I don’t believe. She’s way too hot to be a--”

“You probably don’t want to finish that sentence,” Cortez advises, casting a look over at Samantha.

“Huh? Oh, right.” Vega laughs nervously, catching on. “Sorry, chica. You know I’d be all over you if I knew I was your type. Has anyone ever told you how hot your accent is? I mean, _damn_.” He stretches the “damn” out into two syllables.

“Nice save there, Vega,” she replies dryly. “And yes, I do get the accent thing a lot. And it unfortunately tends to come from people that I’m not interested in to begin with.”

“I think she’s insulting you.” Cortez chuckles.

Vega chooses not to say anything in response to this. After they have placed their bets, he continues with, “But hey, Traynor, you’re a lady who likes other ladies. Maybe you’re able to tell what Shepard’s interested in.”

Samantha could say that the degree to which Shepard had enjoyed the sex that they’d had is a pretty good indicator of the Commander’s attraction to women, but she doesn’t even want to think about how Vega would react to that piece of information. Instead, she gives an answer similar to what EDI had told her when she’d had the same inquiry.

“Well, she was apparently in a relationship with Liara a while back, so…”

“Dios mio.” Vega sounds almost reverent--as if he needs yet another reason to admire Shepard. “How come none of us got to see any of that, huh? Do you think maybe EDI has surveillance footage of it somewhere?”

“You are a terrible person,” Samantha says, doubly glad that she hasn't mentioned her own sexual encounter with Shepard. She turns her attention back to her cards and the three new ones that she has swapped for. She has acquired another nine, and although that doesn’t make for a great hand, a two-pair is better than nothing. Whether her opponents have anything better is anyone’s guess. She’s good at reading people when playing chess, but poker is an entirely different story.

“So I guess you were kind of right, Esteban,” Vega says. “But that doesn’t change the fact that Shepard and the Major are definitely into each other. Which means she’s not exclusively interested in ladies.”

“Okay, so I can definitely believe that she’s bi,” replies Cortez. “I just don’t see any evidence that the two of them are together. Or maybe it’s because I haven’t been looking for it.”

“Well, next time you’re shuttling them around, take a look. They’ll totally be giving each other goo-goo eyes.”

“If you say so.” Cortez still sounds doubtful. Samantha would be too if she hadn’t already seen romantic interaction between Shepard and Alenko. She could have easily put to rest Vega and Cortez’s debate over what exists between the Commander and the Major by telling them this, but the mere thought of it makes her sick to her stomach.

Everyone lays down their cards. Vega ends up winning the hand with a ten-high straight; Cortez has only fared slightly better than Samantha with pairs of kings and sevens. At least she hasn’t lost too badly this time around.

As the next round of cards is dealt out, she hears footsteps behind her signifying someone’s approach to the poker table. Her stomach drops when she hears Vega’s greeting of “Hey, Major,” followed by Alenko’s reply.

“You should have told me you were playing,” he says. “I would’ve liked to join in.”

“Thought you were on duty,” Vega replies. “But we’re starting a new hand right now, so we can deal you in if you want to play. That is, if you’re ready to lose as badly to me as you did the other day.”

“Well, with a taunt like that, how could I back down?” Alenko gives a slight chuckle as he sits down in a vacant chair--which, as luck would have it, happens to be next to Samantha.

“It’s good timing that you showed up, actually,” says Cortez. “We were just talking about you, and maybe you can help settle some of the rumors that have been flying around lately. Like this guy--” He nods to Vega. “--who thinks that there’s something going on between you and Commander Shepard.”

Alenko nearly drops the cards that he has been dealt. “Where’d you get that from?”

“Apparently it’s obvious and the rest of us haven’t caught on to it yet.”

“Yo, I see her staring at your ass when she thinks no one’s looking,” Vega says. “And I’ve totally caught you checking her out too. So spill it, amigo.”

Samantha stares back down at her cards, wishing more than ever that she could be somewhere else and not having to listen to this conversation.

“Well, uh, officially Shepard and I have nothing more than a professional friendship,” Alenko replies. “Unofficially, however…” The way he trails off speaks the rest of his words for him.

“Ha! I knew it!” Vega slams a triumphant hand down onto the table. “I knew you were totally banging her.”

A slight frown crosses Alenko’s expression. “We’re taking things slow for now. In case you’ve forgotten, Vega, we’re kind of in the middle of a war here.”

“Man, screw that. If I were in your place, I’d be jumping her every chance I had.”

Something in Vega’s words, or perhaps the whole conversation in general, pushes Samantha over the edge. She stands up from her chair, not realizing how abruptly she has done so until she notices the three pairs of eyes that have settled upon her.

“You okay, chica?” Vega asks.

“I just remembered that I have to do something,” she lies quickly. “Have to, er, run tests on some new software that EDI installed earlier. I guess it could wait, but I’ll forget about it later if I don’t do it now, and...” She’s babbling, desperately hoping that they will believe her excuse so she can get away as soon as possible. Placing her cards down on the table, she hurries out of the lounge. She is sure that all three men are staring at her as she departs.

She hates how she has gotten so worked up over the discussion of Shepard and Alenko’s relationship. After all, the information isn’t new to her anymore. Hearing Alenko’s confirmation that something does indeed exist between him and Shepard, however, hits her in the gut equally as hard as seeing them together on the Citadel. Before, she could at least hold onto the foolish and desperate hope that she has misinterpreted what she saw between them. Now, she can no longer deny that Shepard has moved on from her, casting her aside in favor of someone else.

As the turmoil of emotions inside her rages, she realizes more than ever that she should talk to someone about what has happened. After all the times she has had to hear people asking her if anything’s wrong, she probably would benefit from the opportunity to let everything out. She has given pieces of the story to EDI and Joker, of course, but neither of them know anything beyond her having a crush on Shepard. What she really needs is someone unbiased, someone uninvolved. If only the Normandy had an onboard psychologist--but it hadn’t had one since its Cerberus days, and even then from what she has heard it was less “psychologist” and more “yeoman with a degree in psychology who enjoys helping people with their problems.” Therefore, she has to settle for the next best thing, which is why she finds herself outside the medbay.

The door has been left open, and so Samantha enters. “Dr. Chakwas?” she says to get the attention of the ship’s chief medical officer who sits at her desk. Chakwas might not be the best example of someone impartial to talk to, considering she has known both Shepard and Alenko for a few years, but considering the circumstances she is Samantha’s best option. She likes Chakwas, anyway. She reminds her of her mother sometimes, although that might be because of the superficial similarity of them both being middle-aged women with English accents.

“Oh, hello, Samantha,” Chakwas greets her. “Do you need a prescription refill?”

“No. Not right now, at least. I’m running low on antihistamines, but I should have enough for a little while longer.” She clears her throat, remembering why she’s here. “I was hoping that we could talk, actually. I’ve had a lot on my mind lately, and I probably should have talked to someone a long time ago, but I didn’t think it was a big deal and I thought I could handle it on my own. But now I’ve been coming to realize that I… can’t.”

“Have a seat.” Chakwas gestures to the empty chair next to her. She lights up her omni-tool to close the door to the medbay. “What’s been bothering you?”

Samantha sits, hands twisting themselves nervously in her lap as she wonders how she should begin. “Anything that I tell you will stay between the two of us, right?” she asks. “Doctor-patient confidentiality, and all that?”

“Of course.” The nod that Chakwas gives her is both reassuring and encouraging. “Tell me what’s been on your mind.”

Samantha takes a deep breath, although this does not calm her fidgeting. “Well, for starters, I, er… I slept with Commander Shepard.” This is the first time that she has admitted this fact aloud to anyone, and the words feel strange leaving her mouth.

“Oh.” Chakwas remains impassive, and so Samantha can’t determine whether she is judging her for what she has done. “And how long ago was this?”

Samantha can’t remember how many weeks (or months, even) have passed since that night in Shepard’s cabin. Time passes strangely in space, after all. “I’ve lost track. It was right before the coup on the Citadel, if you need a general timeframe.”

Chakwas nods again. “I see. Do you require any medical assistance regarding that encounter? I know a pregnancy test won’t be necessary, but perhaps a screening for sexually transmitted infections, or…”

“No,” Samantha replies quickly. “No, I don’t think I need any of that.” She sincerely hopes that Shepard doesn’t have any infections that could have unknowingly been passed on to her. Now _there’s_ a thought that she’d never thought she’d have. “I guess I just need emotional support. Because things between Commander Shepard and I have been a little, erm, _complicated_ lately.”

Chakwas doesn’t say anything in response to this, and so Samantha takes that as her cue to continue. “I’d had feelings for her,” she explains, her words spilling out a lot more easily after making her initial confession. “Or… I still have feelings, I guess. I don’t know why I put that in the past tense. Maybe it’s because I’ve been trying to forget about her lately. Anyway, I thought that nothing would come out of it because, you know, she’s Commander Shepard and I’m just a comm specialist. But then she started to seem like she was interested, and she ended up inviting me to her cabin to play chess, except we didn’t actually end up playing chess because she offered me use of her shower and things kind of, er, _escalated_ from there. And then after all of that I thought that I’d actually have a chance with her, but then she got busy with the whole mess at the Citadel and we didn’t have much opportunity to talk. And even after she’d dealt with everything after the coup she never talked to me. So I asked her how things were between us, and she said that she shouldn’t let anything else happen between us because she’s been under a lot of pressure with the war going on and everything. And I believed her, but it turns out I was an idiot for doing that.” She is going to start crying any moment now. Her eyes and sinuses sting with the telltale sign of tears. “I was a big, sodding idiot because she probably never even felt anything for me in the first place. She was just using me to help her get over Liara and convince herself that she doesn’t have feelings for Major Alenko, and…” She trails off there. Her shoulders tremble with a suppressed sob as she tries and fails to swallow her tears.

Chakwas silently pushes a box of tissues across the desk to her. Samantha accepts them with a quiet word of thanks as she dabs at her eyes. She allows herself one pathetic, whimpering sob.

“You’re not an idiot, Samantha,” Chakwas assures her. She speaks with infinite patience, as if she’s talking to a small child.

“I am, though.” Samantha crumples the tissue that she has been using in her hand. “We’re in the middle of a war. People are dying by the millions across the galaxy right now. And I’m sitting here crying like a stupid hormonal teenager because the last hope for the galaxy turned down a relationship with me only to move on to someone else just as quickly. I’m fairly certain that qualifies me as an idiot.”

Chakwas doesn’t say anything at first, and Samantha fears once again that the older woman is passing some sort of judgment on her. “You said that you talked to her,” Chakwas says finally. “Have you spoken to her recently?”

“No,” Samantha replies. She wipes her eyes again and blows her nose, trying to make herself into a little less of a sobbing wreck. “I haven’t had a conversation with her that isn’t business-related since… well, since she said that there shouldn’t be a relationship between us. I honestly don’t know what I’d say to her if we did end up talking. I can’t very well go up to her and say that she should be with me instead of Major Alenko. And I know I’m better off forgetting about her, but I can’t. I still think about her all the time. It’s like, I try not to think about her, but she just kind of creeps into my mind, and I remember what it was like to be with her, and…” She stops there before the conversation strays into a rather inappropriate direction. “And then I think about how she stopped talking to me after we slept together, like I was something to be ashamed of. A mistake,” she adds, remembering what Shepard had said when she had confronted her about the issue. “So I started to almost hate her. Which made me feel even more awful because I never thought that I would end up hating her. Because I’d built up this image of her in my mind of her being, you know, perfect. Capable of no wrongs. And now after everything that’s happened I’ve realized that she... isn’t.”

Chakwas makes a small hum of sympathy. “Ah, yes. The realization that everyone who knows Commander Shepard goes through. The fact that she’s not just a hero, but a woman as well. And a fallible woman, at that.”

“I know,” says Samantha. She has known this for a long time, ever since Liara had called Shepard a complex woman who is difficult to love. Only now does she fully understand what Liara had meant by that. “I should have known to not expect anything to happen between us. But it felt so good to hope.” She sighs. “Sorry for rambling on about all of this to you. You probably have better things to do than listening to me cry over Commander Shepard.”

“Of course not.” Chakwas’s smile is reassuring. “It probably felt good for you to get all of that out.”

“A bit, yeah,” Samantha admits. The pit of negative emotions that surfaced during the poker game weighs in her stomach, but her confessions to Chakwas have pushed it down, preventing it from rising up and consuming the rest of her body. She wipes her eyes for a third time. She already feels how red and puffy they are, and she hasn’t even been crying for long.

“Why don’t you stay here for a little while?” Chakwas suggests. “I can make us some tea, and we’ll chat some more. I imagine you don’t want to have to explain why you’re upset if someone sees you right now.”

“Yes. Thank you.” It’s bad enough that she will likely have to give a further explanation to Vega, Cortez, and Alenko as to why she had bolted away from the poker table so quickly. She doesn’t want to add feeble excuses as to why she has been crying on top of that.

The cup of tea that Chakwas serves her a few minutes later warms her, and as the relief of letting out everything that has happened between her and Shepard spreads through her, she realizes she is finally taking a step forward.


	8. Chapter 8

The list of Commander Shepard’s accomplishments in this war never stops growing. The past few weeks have been dedicated to trying to gain as much quarian support as possible, and in accordance to how most things have gone lately, each step forward leads to another step backward. Samantha won’t easily forget seeing Shepard’s face twist in fury as she slams her fist into the stomach of the quarian admiral who had given the order to open fire on a geth dreadnought when Shepard and her team had been aboard it. In that moment, Samantha understands exactly what people mean when they say that it’s never a good idea to anger the Commander.

But as always, victory is achieved in the end, and Shepard becomes the hero to yet another alien race. This time, it’s for helping the quarians regain their homeworld and achieving the diplomatically impossible task of initiating a shaky peace between the quarians and the geth. Taking out a Reaper single-handedly also adds an impressive mark to her record, but Shepard killing Reapers has become old news by now. Everyone is much more impressed by the acts of diplomacy that she has performed throughout the war, uniting the galaxy in a way that has never been done before. Even Samantha, despite her disillusionment after realizing that Shepard isn’t always the selfless war hero that the public portrays her as, can’t help but admire what she has done.

The day after the Normandy leaves Rannoch, Samantha ends up at the medbay again. Thankfully, this time it’s not due to an emotional crisis, but rather the simple need to refill one of her prescriptions. When she reaches the medbay, however, she sees that the door is closed and the lights are dimmed inside. At first she thinks that Dr. Chakwas is out, but then she notices the green light on the door signifying that it’s unlocked. Curious, she palms open the door to see if anyone is inside.

Chakwas is not sitting at her usual post at her desk, and Samantha doesn’t know whether she should be surprised by this or not. “Dr. Chakwas?” she calls hesitantly, in case the doctor is working in a different part of the medbay.

“She’s not here right now.” The voice that she hears in response doesn’t belong to Chakwas. She recognizes the soft, husky tones as belonging to Major Alenko. Turning her head to follow the sound of his voice, she discerns the dark shape of his body lying on one of the cots.

“Do you know when she’ll be back?” she asks, biting back her question of why he is lying in the dark like this.

“Probably in about five or ten minutes,” he replies. “You can wait here if you want. I don’t mind.”

Samantha takes a few steps closer to where he lies. Ordinarily, she’d follow her immediate instinct to avoid Alenko at all costs, but part of her new “getting over Shepard” strategy that she has developed involves not letting herself flee from any interaction with either of them.

“Are you all right?” she asks him out of polite courtesy. He doesn’t look like he’s injured, although upon closer inspection he has a damp cloth draped across his forehead.

“Just a migraine. Side-effect of my L2 implant,” he adds in further explanation. “Usually I can keep them under control, but they’ve been worse ever since I got injured on Mars. Shepard told me that I can rest in her cabin whenever they get bad, but she’s busy writing up the report on Rannoch right now and I didn’t want to bother her, so…” He trails off there, realizing the implications that he has set forth by mentioning the level of access that he has to the Commander’s cabin. “Anyway,” he continues, “the worst of it has passed by now. A little more rest here until my sensitivity to light and sound goes away, and then I’ll be fine. What about you? What do you need the doc for?”

“I need a refill for one of my meds,” she explains. She decides that she might as well pull up a chair and sit down while she waits. Look at her, taking the initiative to sit down and have a conversation with Alenko. Operation Getting Over Shepard is actually making progress.

“Meds?” A slight frown of concern crosses Alenko’s expression. “Everything all right?”

“It’s nothing bad. Just for my allergies.”

“Seriously? I thought gene therapy had eliminated most allergies by now.”

“Not on the colony where I grew up,” Samantha says. “There were only enough medical supplies to give gene therapy to people with life-threatening conditions. And unfortunately, even with the mess of health problems that I ended up with, none of them qualified as life-threatening. So that means lots of pills and pumps and inhalers for me.”

Alenko makes a sympathetic noise. “That must suck.”

“Yeah, but I’m used to it. Like you said about your migraines, I suppose. You learn to deal with it.”

He shifts slightly on the cot, adjusting the cloth laid across his forehead. He grimaces in pain, and Samantha wonders if she’s aggravating his migraine by talking to him.

“So you’re a colony kid, huh?” he says, his continuation of their conversation swiftly disproving her theory. “I would’ve thought you were from somewhere in England, going by your accent. If you’ll forgive my assumption.”

“I get that a lot,” she replies. She hasn’t expected to give her whole life story to him, but the words come out of her mouth anyway. “My parents are both from London, but they jumped at the chance to live out in the colonies. So that was where I spent most of my life. But I did spend some time on Earth for my schooling. I went to Oxford for university on full Alliance scholarship. And then after graduation I did my required Alliance service, and I ended up liking the labs too much to leave. What about you?” she asks in polite inquiry.

“I’m from Vancouver,” he says. “Lived most of my early life there. I also spent some time out at Jump Zero when I was a kid for biotics training, but the program ended up getting shut down.” A shadow of regret passes across his expression at the mention of this, but it leaves as quickly as it comes. “Then I was back on Earth for a while, until I decided to follow in my dad’s footsteps and enlist in the Alliance Navy. I’ve pretty much been living from one posting to another since then. The Normandy’s probably the closest thing I’ve had to a home out here in space.” He sighs. “With the way things are going on Earth, it might be the only home I’ve got left now.”

Samantha recognizes that faraway look of despair and grief in his eyes. It’s the look that everyone gets when they talk about what has been lost in the wake of the Reaper invasions. “You know what, though?” he continues. “Being here on the Normandy again… it almost makes me think that we have a chance in all this.”

“You think so?”

“I’m a practical man, Traynor. I can usually tell when something’s going to be a lost cause. But being here under Shepard’s command, I get this sense of hope that we might just be able to beat the Reapers.” The hint of a smile breaks through his expression. “She does that kind of thing to you, giving you hope when you don’t think you have any. Even when she doesn’t have faith in herself, you still have faith in her. She’s an extraordinary woman like that.”

“You really care about her, don’t you?” She shouldn’t be asking him this. She should hate the very idea of him being with Shepard. She should hate _him_ for being the probable reason as to why she and Shepard aren’t together. But she doesn’t hate him, despite feeling like she has every right to do so. Maybe it’s because this is the first time she has had a real one-on-one conversation with him that isn’t strictly business, allowing her to see him as an actual person independent of the man who has come between her and Shepard. It’s funny how this kind of revelation has had the opposite effect in comparison to her realization that Shepard is just another human being.

Alenko nods in response to her statement. “She’s--well, you know that we’re now, uh, together. And even though it hasn’t been very long since we started our relationship, the one thing that scares me the most about this war is that I might lose her. I mean, I’ve already lost her once, back when we were just friends, just commanding officer and subordinate. And even that was… God, it was hell. I can’t go through that again.” He laughs humorlessly. “So much for that optimism I had, huh?”

Hearing him speak so tenderly about Shepard pierces through her heart, embedding her insides with tiny shards of glass that remind her of everything that she could have had with Shepard. She momentarily disregards everything that she has recently thought about Alenko, instead feeling a surge of envy and anger toward what he has developed with Shepard. The emotions pass quickly, however. If she’s going to continue to be an adult about this, she shouldn’t sulk like a child over not being with Shepard, especially because Alenko’s fears about the Commander seem to be very real.

“We’ll make it through this, Major Alenko,” she assures him, unsure of where her own burst of optimism has come from. “We all will.”

“Ah--just Kaidan is fine,” he corrects her. “I figure since you’re seeing me flat on my back with a migraine and hearing me ramble on like this, we can dispense with formalities. But you’re right. Shepard would probably tell me the same thing.”

“Are you sure you want to make a comparison like that?” Not too long ago, Samantha would have been pleased out of her mind to be likened to Commander Shepard. Now that the pedestal that she’d once placed Shepard upon has crumbled away, she’s less certain that she wants to be compared to the woman who has hurt her so deeply.

“She has a tendency to rub off on people,” Alenko-- _Kaidan_ \--replies. “Whether you like it or not.”

Before Samantha has a chance to reply to this, the door behind them opens, signifying Dr. Chakwas’s return. “Oh, I didn’t know that you were here, Samantha,” she says. “I hope you didn’t have to wait long.”

“No, not long at all,” Samantha replies. “I was told that you’d be back soon, so…”

“I hope you haven’t been bothering Major Alenko too much.” Chakwas’s tone is both reprimanding and gentle. She is likely the one person other than Samantha herself who understands how important it is that she has initiated conversation with someone whom she has previously tried to avoid.

“She hasn’t been a bother at all, Doc,” Kaidan pipes up in immediate reassurance. “Having the company has been nice.”

“I’m guessing you’re here for a prescription refill this time?” Chakwas says. “You mentioned that you were running low last time you were here.”

“Er, yeah.” Samantha stands up from where she has been sitting near Kaidan’s cot. “Antihistamines.”

Chakwas walks over to the cabinet that holds all of the medications that she keeps stocked on the ship, careful not to make too much noise as she rummages through its contents. “Here you are, dear,” she says, returning with a pill bottle in hand. “Is there anything else you need?”

“No, that should be fine for now. Thank you.” Clasping her fingers around the bottle, she turns to leave, but not before remembering the polite courtesy of “I hope you feel better soon, Major Alenko.” She’s not quite ready to shift to addressing him by first name yet, as much as she tries to reinforce him as Kaidan in her mind.

She departs from the medbay. Rounding the corner of the corridor on her way to the crew quarters, she nearly collides with the other person on the ship whom she has been half-avoiding recently.

“I’m so sorry, Commander,” Samantha says in rapid apology after Shepard has gracefully dodged out of the way to avoid collision. Her first instinct is to rush away in the opposite direction, but her feet remain glued to the spot.

“No harm done, Traynor. I’m good at avoiding bodies rushing at me.” Half a smile quirks her lips upward, giving her glimpse of the old Shepard that she had known before everything changed between them.

“Of course.” An awkward silence settles in the narrow corridor. This is the first time in weeks that they have talked to each other outside of the CIC, and Samantha has almost forgotten how to engage the Commander in casual conversation. “So, er, what are you doing down here on the crew deck?” she asks. “I thought you were busy working on the report on Rannoch.”

“I’m headed toward the medbay,” Shepard says. “Heard Kaidan wasn’t feeling well, so I thought I’d check up on him. Chakwas will want to check on the healing of my stitches too.” She points to her chin, which bears the mark of a recent injury, likely sustained at some point during the mission on Rannoch. The deep cut has left an angry red line across her pale skin. “But since you’re here, there’s something that I wanted to tell you.”

A weird, swirling feeling of anticipation settles in Samantha’s stomach. What could Shepard possibly want to tell her after such a long period of not talking to her about anything non-business related? She manages to get out an inquisitive “Oh?” before that sensation of anxious unease overtakes her.

“Don’t worry, it’s good news,” Shepard assures her. “You remember a while back when I said that I hadn’t had any contact from my mom since the Reapers hit Earth? I told Hackett to keep an eye out for any news of her--the two of them are old friends, I’ve known him since I was a kid and everything. And so when I checked in with him after Rannoch, he said that he’d finally heard from her and that she’s okay.”

“That’s very good news,” says Samantha. At least that’s one of Shepard’s worries taken care of, although that does not change how this war adds new worries to her mind with every day that passes.

“Yeah.” Shepard gives a slight laugh of relief. “He said he’s offered her a position working on the Crucible. And she also finally accepted the promotion that the Alliance has been trying to give her for ages. She’s Rear Admiral Shepard now.” Her voice holds a certain amount of pride in it when she gives her mother’s rank. “I haven’t had a chance to talk to her yet, but knowing that she’s safe is enough for now.”

“Well, I’m relieved to hear that, Commander.” Samantha hesitates before continuing on. All kinds of words and phrases form themselves in her head, but they die away before she can give voice to them. Her hand clenches and unclenches around the bottle of antihistamines in an unconscious nervous motion. “But why are you telling me about it?” she asks. She resists the urge to add “because it’s not like we talk much anymore since you dropped me off the face of the earth after getting together with Kaidan.”

“You’re one of the few people who I told that I hadn’t heard from my mom,” Shepard replies. She gives a slight shrug, as if the matter is unimportant. “I thought it would be nice to give you an update.”

“Thanks for letting me know.” Samantha is careful to keep her tone even and businesslike, as if they are talking about a connection issue with the comms or the results of some new data that has come in. It’s the only way that she can get through a conversation like this.

Another awkward, hesitant moment passes between them. “Something else on your mind, Traynor?” Shepard inquires, taking note of Samantha’s continued unease.

Her head tells her that she wants to maintain some semblance of civility between her and Shepard, but her heart wants to call her out for everything that she has done. What ends up leaving her mouth is a combination of the two.

“You could have told me that you have feelings for Major Alenko.”

Her words initially receive no response. The only physical reaction that Shepard has to her words is a quiet puff of breath that escapes from between her lips. “You know about that?” she replies finally.

“I think a lot of people know by now.” Word travels fast on the ship, after all, even though the news of Shepard and Kaidan’s relationship has not exactly been formally publicized. “Whatever happened to you saying that you were too busy with the war to have a relationship with someone? What makes him different?”

“I--” Shepard abruptly breaks off there, as if Samantha has caught her off guard with her question. Whatever glimpse of vulnerability that she shows, though, quickly fades. “I guess I wasn’t being entirely truthful when I said that. I just… Everything was really complicated back then. I thought that was the best way to make you understand.” She huffs out another sigh. “Listen, Traynor, I really don’t want to have this conversation here.”

“Just answer my question.” Samantha’s response comes out sharper than she has intended.

“I didn’t want to hurt you.” The quiet words that leave Shepard’s mouth certainly sound sincere, but Samantha immediately doubts them.

“But it’s okay if you hurt him?” She wonders if Shepard realizes that she’s digging herself deeper with every word she says. _Give me the shovel, Commander_ , she wants to say. _Stop digging a hole and go back to hide behind those walls that you always insist on putting up._

Shepard runs a hand through her hair in a restless motion. “No. That’s not what I meant. I… I don’t know.” She visibly tenses with frustration and uncertainty. “You should go, Traynor.”

Samantha’s first instinct is to insist that Shepard can’t dismiss the issue by ending the conversation with her, but Shepard’s command to her carries the same weight as any other order that she would give. Therefore, the only response that Samantha gives is an acknowledgement of “Yes, ma’am” before walking past Shepard to continue down the corridor.

She hears the distinct sound of a fist colliding with a wall as she leaves, and when she glances back she sees Shepard’s balled fist resting against the wall, her head bent downward in an unmistakable posture of both anger and regret. In this moment, Samantha recognizes the small crack in Shepard’s own metaphorical walls, and the smallest trace of pity passes through her. The feeling leaves as quickly as it comes, however, and so she turns and walks away.


	9. Chapter 9

Throughout the course of the war, Samantha has seen more large-scale destruction than she has ever wished to see. She initially thinks that nothing could be worse than seeing Earth burn below her as the Normandy launched into space or hearing the stories of how Palaven, one of the strongest military forces in the galaxy, is hanging by a thread. The fall of Thessia, however, hits the entire crew of the Normandy like a punch to the gut. The asari are the galaxy’s most powerful and respected species, and seeing their homeworld fall to the Reapers proves that nobody is safe from the Reaper forces.

The CIC is dead silent when the ground team returns to the ship after their forced retreat. Liara goes straight to her quarters without saying a word to anyone, and Samantha can only imagine the pain that she must be feeling. Shepard’s voice sounds deader than Samantha has ever heard it when she gives preliminary orders before going into the comm room to give the inevitable report of failure to the Council. From that point forward, she doesn’t see Shepard return to the CIC. She only hears second-hand reports about what has been going on elsewhere on the ship: Liara having a grief-stricken screaming match with Javik, Shepard intervening before things get violent, everyone not knowing what to do next in the wake of such a tremendous loss.

Shepard’s usual post-mission routine after her primary duties have been taken care of is to make the rounds to the crew to check on their progress, but after the departure from Thessia, Samantha neither sees nor hears anything from her. Even though the emotional turmoil of facing the mission’s failure is perhaps a valid reason for the previously always successful Shepard to make herself scarce, her lack of presence worries Samantha. She definitely doesn’t want to disturb anything that the Commander might be going through right now, and considering how strained their communication has been lately, she’s not sure how she would even talk to Shepard after something like this. When an email comes through from the asari military command about the evacuation of the planet, however, Samantha knows that this is a message that should immediately be passed on, no matter what lingering conflict exists between her and Shepard.

“Commander, you have a new message at your private terminal,” she says, placing a call through to Shepard’s comm with the standard protocol of notification that she has given countless times during her time on the Normandy. Unlike all of those other times, her words are only met with silence. Shepard must have turned off her comm, which immediately indicates that something is wrong. She _never_ cuts herself off from communication unless a mission calls for radio silence. The small coil of worry on Shepard’s behalf that has settled itself in Samantha’s stomach grows, even though a quiet voice in her head whispers that she should not be concerned about the Commander after everything that has happened between them.

She calls EDI next. “Have you heard from Commander Shepard lately?” she inquires. If anyone would know what Shepard is up to right now, it would be the ship’s AI.

“Shepard returned to her quarters about half an hour ago,” EDI replies. “She proceeded to shut off all of her comm devices and disable the surveillance mechanisms. I am not able to give any more information on the matter except that she was exhibiting signs of extreme distress.”

If not even EDI knows what is going on with her, then the situation must be very grave indeed. “She received an email from asari military command. She should respond to it as soon as possible.” Samantha hesitates, weighing her options. “Should I go up to her cabin and let her know in person?” The thought of talking to Shepard at a time like this scares her out of her mind, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

“I do not think that would be advisable,” says EDI. “However, you are more knowledgeable in human interaction than I am, so it is your decision.”

Samantha considers the matter. She understands that EDI is probably correct in that Shepard does not want to be disturbed right now. Letting the email go unread for too long, however, may lead to unwanted consequences considering the gravity of the situation.

“I’m going up,” she says in firm decision. “I’ll be back soon.”

“Very well, Specialist Traynor,” EDI replies before their comm link disconnects.

For once, Samantha is not particularly nervous during the elevator’s ascent to Deck 1. “Anxious” would be a better word, and this anxiety is more directed toward Shepard’s reaction than anything else. She remembers Liara’s words from long ago about how Shepard doesn’t take well to failure. Samantha has a distinct suspicion that the fall of Thessia may have been enough to bring Shepard’s already-cracking protective walls tumbling down.

The red light on the door to Shepard’s cabin indicates that it’s locked, adding yet another barrier between her and the rest of the world. With all of Shepard’s comms off, Samantha has to resort to more old-fashioned methods.

“Commander?” she calls, projecting her voice as much as possible. “Pardon me for interrupting anything, but you have an email that I think you should look at and respond to immediately.”

She only receives silence in response to her words, which increases her worries. The light on the door shifts from red to green, allowing her entrance. She hesitantly opens the door, not sure of what she is going to find inside.

Shepard sits on the edge of her bed, hands braced against her knees. The orange glow of her omni-tool fades away after having used it to unlock the door. Samantha then realizes that she is not alone: Kaidan is present as well, his arm wrapped around her in a comforting gesture that makes Samantha’s heart clench with momentary anger. Briefly, she wonders whether Shepard has deliberately let him through her literal and figurative defenses or if he has forced his way through himself. In an ideal world, she would have been the one in Kaidan’s position, comforting Shepard in the aftermath of her defeat. But everything that has happened between her and Shepard has been far from ideal, and now Samantha is left standing awkwardly in the middle Shepard’s cabin, unsure of what to say next.

“What’s the email, Traynor?” Shepard doesn’t look at her when she speaks. Her eyes remain trained downward at her knees, and her voice is heavy.

“It’s from asari military command, ma’am. About the evacuation of Thessia.” Samantha avoids looking at Shepard as well. Now more than ever she realizes she has intruded upon something private. Seeing the way that Kaidan tightens his arm around her shoulders is almost as bad as walking in on them doing something far more intimate.

Shepard stands up from her bed to walk over to the private terminal at her desk. When she passes by, Samantha can’t ignore the distinct redness around her eyes, which makes the green of her irises stand out even more than usual. The idea of “Shepard” and “crying” doesn’t mesh well, but maybe it isn’t so much of a surprise that she has finally broken under all of the pressure that has been forced upon her.

The terminal lights up with Shepard’s email program. Her right hand slowly curls into a fist as she reads the message.

“ _Fuck_.” The invective hisses out from between her lips in a quietly explosive sound as she drives her fist into the desk.

“What is it?” Kaidan inquires. He stands up in a sudden motion, but he doesn’t walk over to join Shepard yet.

“It wasn’t from asari military command.” Shepard’s voice regains its emotionless quality. “It was a disguised message from Kai Leng. A taunt.” Angry tones seep into her words as she reads from the email. “‘Never forget that your best wasn’t good enough to stop me. Now an entire planet is dying because you lacked the strength to win.’ He thinks he can throw something like that right in my face, that--that fucking son of a bitch.” Her fist dashes against the surface of the desk again.

Samantha flinches at the sound of the impact. She now regrets more than ever having come to notify Shepard of the email.

“I--I’m sorry, Commander--” she stammers out, but the sharp sound of Shepard’s voice cuts her off.

“Did you know this was a fake message when you came to tell me about it?” Shepard grips the edge of her desk, her knuckles straining white from the force.

“I--no, Commander. I had no idea.” Samantha realizes what this looks like: that she has deliberately passed on Kai Leng’s scathing email to further tip Shepard over the emotional edge in retaliation for the turmoil that she has put her through. “If I had known it was a fake message. I--I wouldn’t have been so insistent that you read it,” she continues on, desperate to make Shepard believe her.

Shepard does not say anything in response, although her grip on the edge of her desk loosens. A quiet sigh of breath escapes from between her lips.

“What are you going to do?” Kaidan asks. His voice is quiet, tentative, as if he doesn’t want to put the full pressure on Shepard to take control of the situation.

“Just give me a second to think.” She runs a hand through her hair, taking a deep inhale of breath. Samantha counts the seconds that pass by--one, two, three, four, five--before Shepard breathes out again, the tension visibly easing out of her shoulders as she does so.

“Okay,” she says, more to herself than to anyone else in the room. “Okay. Traynor, I need you and EDI to see if you can track Kai Leng’s location from this email and whatever other intel you can find. The sooner we find him, the sooner he’ll be out of our way.”

Samantha wants to say that she’s not sure how well that will work out. Even with the advanced programs that she has access to, the email is highly encrypted, and who knows what kinds of other safeguards Kai Leng may have put in place to ensure that his location isn’t discovered. She’s not going to disregard an order from Shepard, though, and so she says, “Yes, ma’am. I’ll try my best.”

“I don’t want you to _try_. I need you to _believe_ that you’ll do your best.” It’s astonishing how rapidly Shepard has transformed from a vulnerable woman to a confident commander. Even the red blotchiness on her cheeks cannot hide the fire that has surfaced in her eyes.

“Aye-aye, Commander,” Samantha replies. “I’ll do my best.”

“Good.” Shepard nods in a decisive gesture. “Dismissed, Traynor.”

She salutes in acknowledgment of the order and departs from the cabin, hearing the faint sounds of Shepard and Kaidan discussing further courses of action as she walks toward the elevator. When she is back at her workstation in the CIC, she turns on her comm. A strange sort of energy rushes through her, the kind that she gets whenever she has a difficult and exciting task on hand. In this moment, she understands some of the fire in Shepard’s eyes.

“EDI, I need you at the galaxy map right now,” she says. “We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us.”

 

* * *

 

Samantha and EDI work well into the night cycle, breaking apart the invisible clues left in Kai Leng’s message to track its possible origin. Of course, each second that passes means that the assassin may be getting further and further away from them, which only compounds the difficulty of the task on hand.

When Samantha’s eyes are starting to strain from the glow of her terminal, EDI insists that she take a break. “Your insight is invaluable,” she says, “but fatigue is not conducive to productive work. I will alert you if I make any major breakthroughs.”

As a result, Samantha ends up on the crew deck, making herself a cup of the most strongly caffeinated coffee that the Normandy has in its food stocks. She will need all the extra energy she can get if she wants to continue working straight through until morning. At this hour, she expects that the only other people who are awake (besides Shepard, of course, who probably never sleeps anymore) are the crew who work during the majority of the night cycle. As she stirs her coffee and adds the perfect ratio of cream and sugar, she is surprised to hear someone enter the kitchen. She is even more surprised to discover that this person is Liara.

“You’re unable to sleep too?” Liara asks her.

“More like too busy to sleep,” she replies. She takes a sip of her coffee. The warm, bitter taste jolts her awake through pure psychological association. “The Commander wants EDI and I to track down Kai Leng’s signal so she can go after him.”

“At this rate, ‘too busy to sleep’ may as well apply to me as well.” Liara sighs, walking over to join her at the counter.

“I can make you some coffee, if you’d like,” Samantha offers.

“I had tea in mind, actually.” Liara reaches up the the cabinet above the counter, sorting through the collection of teas. “I’ve developed a liking for human teas since my time on the first Normandy. The varieties are much different from asari teas, but I find the taste to be far superior.”

She sounds awfully calm for someone whose homeworld has recently fallen to the Reapers and who several hours earlier had been glowing with biotic rage at Javik for his revelation of the Protheans’ involvement in asari religion. Samantha decides to leave this detail aside for now.

“I’m only drinking this coffee to help me stay awake,” she says. “I usually prefer tea. One stereotype that I’m happy to feed into.” At the look of confusion on Liara’s face, she adds, “Ah, sorry. Human thing. British people like tea, according to the stereotypes. My parents liked to try to maintain as much of our Earth culture as possible even though we were living on Horizon, so a liking for tea was drilled into me practically from birth.”

“I think I remember reading something about regional Earth stereotypes in my recreational research,” Liara replies. “This was back during my studies, when I’d had very little firsthand experience interacting with humans. I’d always been fascinated, especially because your species’ late emergence onto the galactic scene meant that it was a rapidly growing research field to help fill in the gaps of what was unknown due to previous lack of direct interaction. But of course, I became far more interested in putting together the mysteries of the Protheans in the end.” Her expression darkens, and she quickly changes the subject. “I think my pet interest in humans, if you could call it that, was what made me so drawn to Shepard when I first met her. Besides her exposure to the Prothean beacon, of course. She used to joke about how she was my science project. But I suppose things were different back then.”

A silence falls between them as Liara waits for the water for her tea to boil. Both of them have been cautiously dancing around the metaphorical elephant in the room with easy conversation about their interests and their pasts. The issue of Liara’s now-fallen homeworld cannot be avoided forever, however, and so Samantha is the one to breach the subject with carefully measured words.

“I’m sorry about Thessia.”

The hand that Liara uses to pour out the water into her mug trembles. “It… I can’t deny that it was a shock,” she replies. “Part of me cannot believe it, and I try to convince myself that maybe it was all just a bad dream that I’ll wake up from soon. I am sure you had the same kind of feelings when Earth was attacked. But…” She trails off, twisting the string of the tea bag around a finger as she lets the tea steep. “Shepard came to talk to me, when the pain of everything that my people and I have lost was still so raw. When I could do nothing but look at the climbing death toll and cry. And even though I knew that she was going through her own set of troubles, she was able to convince me that everything wasn’t lost yet. That I can still do something to ensure the survival of the asari, despite how selfish I’ve been about my own interests. So that’s what I’m doing to prevent myself from further wallowing. I have a vast number of resources at my command, after all. It would be foolish not to use them to help my people.”

“That’s a very admirable thing to do,” Samantha says.

“It is a very Shepard thing to do.” A slight smile crosses Liara’s lips as she takes a drink to test the flavor and temperature of her tea. “When Earth was attacked, Shepard used her position as one of the biggest heroes in the galaxy to start gathering the necessary forces needed to take down the Reapers, creating alliances that were previously deemed impossible. She only let herself wallow long enough until she comes up with a plan of what to do next, and that has stayed true for this entire war, even after a loss like Thessia. And so after she spoke to me, I decided that I would follow her example.”

Samantha sees the truth of Liara’s words in Shepard’s earlier behavior. It was only after the email from Kai Leng gave her a concrete goal of tracking him down that she had pulled herself back together into the determined, always-ready-to-fight soldier that most of the galaxy knows and loves.

“We may have lost Thessia, but we haven’t lost the asari yet,” Liara continues. “Those were Shepard’s words, and I swear by the goddess that I will make those words a reality.” Her determination radiates from her like an invisible biotic corona as she speaks. The hand holding on to her mug of tea clenches slightly.

Samantha drinks her coffee, marveling at how Liara has been able to take her grief and turn it into resolve. “You’re a much braver person than I am,” she confesses. “Even being surrounded by all of these people who have the power and drive to help save the galaxy, I’m so scared almost every day that passes. Less so now than in the beginning, but still… I don’t know how all of you on this ship do it.”

“I think that you’re stronger than you realize, Samantha.” Liara lays a friendly hand on Samantha’s arm, blue skin contrasting against brown. “That’s what being involved in a conflict like this does to you. You find strength that you never knew you had.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Samantha says. “Thanks.”

The sound of her comm interrupts the quiet moment that passes between them as they drink their respective beverages. “That’s probably EDI,” she explains to Liara. She activates her comm to respond to the call. “Did you find something?”

“Yes. I believe I have acquired a reliable lead as to where Kai Leng is currently located.” EDI’s calm tones echo throughout the kitchen as she reports on her progress.

“Really? Already? That’s fantastic. I’ll be right up.” Samantha hasn’t expected EDI to make such a breakthrough so quickly, and she’s a little sorry that she wasn’t with her to make it. “I guess it’s back to work for me,” she says to Liara. “Good luck with your own work.”

Liara’s reply of “You too” follows Samantha on the way out of the kitchen. She gulps down the rest of her coffee as she heads toward the elevator to return to the CIC, where she finds EDI standing at the galaxy map. Her robotic fingers fiddle with the interface, zooming the projection of the galaxy in and out.

“What did you find?” Samantha inquires. She sets down her empty coffee mug at her workstation before joining EDI.

“I have ascertained with approximately 97.5% accuracy, based on extrapolation from the data that you were able to obtain on his shuttle path, that Kai Leng is currently headed toward a possible Cerberus facility somewhere in the Iera system.” EDI indicates the flashing light on the galaxy map’s interface, the indicator that the primary tracking software has used to represent Kai Leng.

“The Iera system?” Samantha’s stomach drops. That’s the system where Horizon is located. With Horizon the only planet in the system that is hospitable to human life, the chance is high that the supposed Cerberus facility is somewhere on her home colony. Even if Cerberus presence is nowhere near as terrifying as a Reaper invasion, the news still hits her hard.

“Unfortunately,” EDI says, zooming in the map to focus on the Iera star and the four planets that orbit it, “the signal disappears somewhere within the system.” Angry red messages pop up on the holographic projection to reinforce this fact. “I have not yet been able to determine why this is.”

“Well, let’s see what we can do.” Samantha goes over to her terminal, her fingers flying across the keyboard as she searches for a possible solution. A lost signal, perhaps? It’s a possibility, but the disappearance of the extrapolated trajectory is too sudden to be a limitation of the software or a problem with the data. It must be something deliberate. Either Kai Leng has been careless enough to only recently make himself untrackable, or something in the Iera system is making signals impossible to trace. Considering the likely Cerberus involvement in the situation, Samantha is leaning toward the latter option.

“It looks like his signal’s being actively blocked by something else in the system,” she says after running some tests to definitely rule out the possibility of a lost signal. “Without a reliable way to figure out what exactly is blocking the signal, I think the only thing we can go off of from this point forward is guesswork.”

“A cursory scan tells me that the Iera system does not have much to offer in terms of interest,” says EDI. “Only one of its planets supports human life--”

“Horizon,” Samantha finishes for her. “I know. I grew up in a colony there. But I’ve never heard anything about any kind of Cerberus presence on the planet recently. The only thing I’ve heard about Horizon in the news since the Collector attack last year is that there’s a refugee facility called Sanctuary for those who have been displaced by the war. It’s become fairly popular from what I’ve heard. I’d be shocked if Cerberus had anything to do with that, but right now it looks like that’s the only lead we’ve got.” She lets out a sigh, staring at the holographic image of her home planet. “I guess we should let Commander Shepard know about this, shouldn't we?”

"She has notified me that all essential personnel will be having a meeting in the war room at 0800 to discuss our next move,” EDI replies. “Seeing as that is in approximately four hours, I would recommend waiting until then to reveal this information. I have very little doubt that the situation will change before then. In the meantime, you should get some rest.”

Samantha rubs a tired hand across her eyes. She has to admit that the coffee that she has consumed hasn’t done a spectacular job at reenergizing her. “Yeah, I probably should,” she agrees. “Let me know if anything changes.”

“Yes, Samantha. Sleep well.”

She doesn’t sleep that night, though, and thoughts of Thessia and Horizon keep her awake until the night cycle ends and it is time for her day to begin again.


	10. Chapter 10

Samantha has never been so personally invested in a mission as she is when Shepard and her ground team land on Horizon near the Sanctuary refugee facility. Unfortunately, soon after Shepard’s squad approaches the facility, the Normandy is cut off from the usual comm chatter that comes through the radio, leaving everyone on the ship in the dark as to what is going on inside Sanctuary. Clearly, whatever is responsible for blocking Kai Leng’s signal is jamming all other forms of communication as well.

Therefore, Samantha has to resort to the age-old tactic of distracting herself from her worries about what Cerberus is doing on Horizon. Thoughts of her family drift into her mind, even if Sanctuary is located far enough away from where they live that she shouldn’t be immediately concerned. She thinks about how long it’s been since she has sent an email to her parents. With so many things happening lately, she hasn’t had the time, and now here she is, closer to her home colony than she’s been in months but unable to do anything except wait while Commander Shepard saves the day. She tries not to think about how she can’t add “as usual” to that statement, not after what happened on Thessia.

The unbearable hours and minutes pass by, but soon enough Shepard’s voice breaks through the comms. “Ground team to Normandy. Whatever was scrambling communications from Sanctuary has been disabled. Is the radio back online?”

“Radio online, Commander Shepard,” EDI confirms. “Was the mission successful?”

“Depends on what your definition of ‘successful’ is.” Samantha tries not to read too much into this statement before Shepard gives any further information. “Kai Leng had already left by the time we got there. And what’s worse, Sanctuary turned out to be a cover operation for Cerberus. It was pretty horrific stuff.” The disgust in Shepard’s voice shines through more than eve at these words.

“Is everyone at the facility all right?” Samantha asks, although she already fears that nothing good can come out of a Cerberus operation that even a hardened soldier deems as horrific.

“Cerberus was running experiments on indoctrination,” Shepard explains. “They were turning the refugees into husks to see how well they could control them.”

“Those Cerberus bastards.” Samantha grits her teeth against these words, trying to force down the bile that rises in her throat. Those had all been people, people who thought they were escaping the war only to be transformed into mindless half-synthetic zombies. Cerberus carrying out these actions makes them no different than the Reapers now.

“It hasn’t been a total loss, though,” says Shepard. “The data from the experiments has been lost, but we’ve been able to salvage some other Cerberus data that might give us a lead for where to track down the Illusive Man. We also ran into Miranda--and the rest of the Lawsons, for that matter. Her sister Oriana and their father. I’ll give more details once we’re back on the ship.”

“Roger that, Shepard,” EDI replies. “Normandy out.”

The disgust and horror that wells within Samantha’s gut at Shepard’s news quickly gives way to anger, and by the time the shuttle has returned, she is nearly seething with rage at what has transpired on her home colony. The only thing that gives her comfort is if she is angry with Cerberus, then Shepard is likely even angrier. She knows by now that things do not end well for any person or group that gets on Shepard’s bad side.

Once she has returned to the ship, Shepard first reports to Admiral Hackett before discussing what has happened with the rest of the crew, and so Samantha instead gets a brief summary from Kaidan. “Shepard told me that you have family on Horizon,” he says to her, coming up to her workstation. “I’m sorry all of this had to happen so close to home.”

“Were the experiments really as horrific as she made them sound?” she asks him. Even though the very thought of refugees turning into husks makes her want to throw up, she is unable to resist the urge to satisfy the morbid curiosity inside of her.

“I’ve seen a lot of terrible things in the time that I’ve spent as a soldier,” Kaidan replies. “There are some things that you don’t forget easily, and, well… what I saw inside Sanctuary is probably near the top of that list. To think that all those husks that we had to kill were once people--innocent people, with their own lives and families…” He trails off there, shaking his head. “It’s terrible.”

“Cerberus had better pay for what they’ve done. They deserve it, those monsters.” Samantha’s hands clench into trembling fists at her sides.

“I agree,” says Kaidan. “I’ve never had much love for Cerberus in the first place, even with Shepard was working with them. Which is, uh… kind of a whole ‘nother story. But I assure you, the rest of us are going to have to line up behind Shepard to get a shot at the Illusive Man.” He gives a humorless laugh. “And that’s assuming that she leaves enough for anybody else.”

“I hope you’re right,” Samantha says. “Because I want to see Cerberus destroyed just as badly as I want the Reapers gone. Commander Shepard _better_ take care of them.”

“She will,” Kaidan assures her. “She always gets the job done.” He hesitates, as if he is internally debating whether to say something else. “Also, not to bring up personal matters all of a sudden,” he continues on. “But, uh… Shepard told me about what happened between the two of you. And she says that she understands why you’re still upset with her.”

“Are you her messenger boy now?” Coldness seeps into Samantha’s voice like an icy wind. She can’t believe that Shepard would resort to such tactics.  How can Shepard unite the entire galaxy against the Reapers when she can’t even properly apologize for something without having to go through someone else?

“No, I’m not her messenger boy,” Kaidan replies. “I actually told her off for not telling you that herself. And it wasn’t her idea to tell you that we talked about it, either. I just… I hope you don’t blame me for everything that happened.”

“I don’t,” Samantha assures him. “Not really, anyway.” More words remain unspoken on her lips about how she once thought that she should hate him for coming between her and Shepard, but she doesn’t say them. “I mean, considering everything, you didn’t really do much. She’s the one who, you know. Led me on and then ignored me.”

“Just give her time,” says Kaidan. “A lot has happened, and she’s been under a lot of stress. Especially after Thessia, and I’m sure this new development about Cerberus isn’t helping any. I’ve known Shepard for a long time, and I don’t think she’d ever completely disregard making things right with you again.”

Samantha isn’t sure whether she believes him, but she nods along anyway. “Well, I suppose I’ll see you at the mission briefing, Major,” she says to him, hoping that her farewell doesn’t sound too curt.

“Yeah. I’ll talk to you later, Traynor.”

Later on, when they’re all standing in the War Room with Shepard reporting to the crew on what happened during the mission, Samantha only remains invested in her words because they describe events happening on her home colony. However, she can’t ignore the steely determination in Shepard’s voice as she states the ship’s next objective of storming the Illusive Man’s base and taking down Cerberus speaks. The way that she talks about how eliminating Cerberus will bring them even closer to taking down the Reapers makes Samantha realize more than ever that they may be approaching a decisive moment in this war.

After the briefing comes to a conclusion, Samantha decides that she should contact her parents, if only to make sure that they’re aware of the truth behind Sanctuary. The advantage of being a comm specialist is that she can easily finagle the ship’s communications to get a direct call through to her parents. She tries not to do it too often so as not to be making personal calls while on duty, but in light of what has happened on Horizon, she’s sure that contacting her parents is a more than acceptable course of action.

“Mum? Dad? Can you hear me?” she says into her comm.

“Sam? Oh, darling, it’s so good to hear from you.” The relief in her mother’s voice makes her heart pang with homesickness.

“We hadn’t heard from you for so long that we were starting to think that you’d forgotten us,” her father adds.

“You weren’t worried?” Samantha asks. “I’m on a warship, after all. Who knows what could have happened to me?”

“Oh, we would have been desperately trying to get in contact with you if we were worried,” her mother says. “I figured that you were busy doing things that were more important than talking to us.”

“I haven’t exactly been doing anything more important. There’s just been a lot going on.” She doesn’t mention that “a lot going on” includes Reaper attacks, abominable Cerberus activities, and dealing with the emotional fallout of trying to get over her feelings for her commanding officer. She can imagine her parents’ laughter at these words, gently teasing her that one of these things is not like the other.

“I promise I haven’t forgotten you,” she assures them instead.

“Whatever you say, darling.” Her mother’s slight laugh echoes through the comm’s speakers.

“So did you have a particular reason for calling us?” her father inquires. “Usually you set up calls with us in advance.”

“Well, yes.” Samantha hesitates, deciding how to exactly phrase what has happened without making her parents worry about her indirect involvement. “Have you heard about what happened at Sanctuary? I expect it’s all over the news by now.”

“The refugee facility? Yes, something about it all being a front for Cerberus activity. It sounds like it’s been exposed very recently. I’m pulling up the news reports right now and it’s one of the top stories. Sounds like there was a hell of a firefight involved. I’m glad the facility is nowhere near us.”

“It’s a real shame,” her mother says. “After the Collector attack last year, everyone thought that having such a large facility for refugees would help rebuild morale and get the affected colonies back on their feet. All kinds of charities for donations and volunteer efforts started popping up. And to think that all of that was actually going to terrorists...”

“You didn’t donate anything to Sanctuary, did you?” The thought of her parents’ hard-earned credits helping fund the horrific indoctrination experiments is almost enough to make Samantha feel sick again.

“Not substantially,” says her mother. “You know how money has always been tight with us. But it’s been impossible to go anywhere around here without being encouraged to donate a few credits whenever possible, so yes, we did donate a little bit. Judging by these news stories, I’m wishing we hadn’t.”

“Do the reports mention what Cerberus was using Sanctuary for?” Samantha asks. Considering the nature of the experiments, she wouldn’t be surprised if the media failed to mention the “turning into husks” part to avoid inducing mass panic and horror.

“Something about experiments,” her father replies. “Let me read to you from this article: ‘Follow-up investigations on the broadcasted warning message reveal that Cerberus used Sanctuary as a front to perform various experiments, many of which are inhumane in nature. No direct evidence of the research exists, however, as most of the results have since been destroyed.’ The reports don’t go into much detail.”

“Cerberus was turning the refugees into husks. I bet they don’t mention that part.” It’s a sign of how much more hardened this war has made her that she can state something like this so matter-of-factly, even though anger and disgust boil within her as she reveals the truth to her parents.

“My _God_.” The revulsion in her father’s voice is unmistakable. Her mother doesn’t say anything, but her shocked gasp spells out her reaction clearly enough. “Where’d you hear that, Sam?”

“The media doesn’t mention that Commander Shepard was one of the ones responsible for exposing the facility?” Samantha is surprised. She would have thought that with Shepard being humanity’s hero, her name would have been one of the first things mentioned.

“Not according to these reports,” her mother says. “You’re saying that the ship you’re on was involved in exposing the facility? Oh, darling, you should have said something earlier.”

“I didn’t want you to worry.” Samantha fidgets as she admits this, twisting her fingers. Her mother is right in that she should have mentioned that detail from the start, but she’d wanted to have the conversation about Sanctuary without her distant involvement as a factor. “Besides, I’m always on the ship managing communications during missions. It’s only the Commander and her ground team that go planetside. Although,” she adds, realizing that her involvement in the situation goes a little deeper than being Shepard’s subordinate, “I was one of the people whose data analysis led to the conclusion that there might be Cerberus activity going on at Sanctuary. If I hadn’t been able to trace the whereabouts of a Cerberus assassin to that area, the truth might have never been exposed.”

“You should have mentioned that earlier too!” Her mother’s words walk a strange line between annoyance and pride: annoyance that until now Samantha has remained modest about the importance of her work and pride that Samantha had contributed so much to the mission. “Did you hear that, dear? Our daughter the hero.”

“Well, I wouldn’t exactly say ‘hero,’” Samantha says, trying hard not to blush at her mother’s praise. “All I do is manage communications. Commander Shepard’s the hero.” She admits this last sentence with a trace of reluctance. Despite the rift that has developed between the two of them, she cannot deny that everything that Shepard has accomplished during the war is nothing short of heroic. It’s her actions away from combat and negotiations that are the problem.

“You did say that without you, Sanctuary might have not been revealed for what it was,” her father points out. “Even if you weren’t directly responsible for exposing it, you still deserve some of the credit.”

“I doubt that the Alliance will see it the same way, but, erm, thanks anyway.” Samantha smiles for what she soon realizes is the first time since hearing the news about Sanctuary. Leave it to her parents’ praise to lighten her mood a little.

“We’ll always be proud of what you do, Sam,” her mother assures her. “And don’t you ever think that you don’t deserve praise just because there are people like Commander Shepard out there. Understand?”

“Yes, Mum.” Even with all of the terrible things happening across the galaxy right now, her mother’s words give her more comfort than anything else that has happened during her time on the Normandy. “Anyway, I should get back to work.” Notifications on her terminal indicate that five new emails have already come in for Shepard. “I’ll try to keep in touch better. I promise.”

“Just knowing that you’re safe is enough,” her father says. “Keep on doing what you’re doing. We know your work is important.”

“We both love you very much, darling,” her mother adds. “Stay safe out there.”

“You too. I love you both as well.” She swallows down the surge of emotion that rushes through her at the prospect of saying goodbye to her parents. She has done this countless times in the years that have passed since she first went to live away from Horizon, but considering the current state of the galaxy she has to face the possibility that every goodbye may be the last one. Her single word of “Goodbye” tries hard to contain as much confidence and strength as possible.

She disconnects from the comm call. As cliched as it sounds, talking to her parents has nearly convinced her that no matter how many horrific things happen as a result of this war, the belief that they have in her--and, implicitly, everyone else on the Normandy--is enough to pull her through. Their civilian opinions may not mean much in the grand scheme of things, but to Samantha, her parents’ support means everything.

She soon returns to work, sorting through the emails that have arrived for Shepard. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Shepard’s approach. Samantha wonders what the Commander wants with her, since they have already covered all the important points about the aftermath of the mission during the debriefing.

“Commander,” she says in her standard acknowledgment of her, a neutral tone that contains a trace of coldness. A few final keystrokes, and the new emails that Shepard has received are properly sorted. “You have new messages at your private terminal.”

“I wanted to see how you were doing, actually,” Shepard replies. “It can’t be easy, knowing that everything that happened at Sanctuary was so close to home.”

Her concern catches Samantha off-guard. Why should Shepard be worried about her when she still hasn’t given any justification for her previous treatment of her? Does she think that engaging Samantha in civil conversation will be enough for her to forget everything that she has done? Now is not the time to start further arguments with Shepard, though. Instead, she lets professionalism take over.

“I’m… all right,” she admits, unable to think of any other words to describe her current state of mind. “I talked to my mum and dad. They’re fine, since Sanctuary isn’t anywhere near where they live, but they’re a bit shaken up by the news, as expected.”

“Kaidan said you sounded pretty passionately angry at Cerberus when he talked to you after the mission.”

“Well, of course I was,” Samantha says. “Horizon was my home. I can’t just sit back and accept what happened there.” She grips either side of her terminal, her hands shaking slightly. “I just… I want Cerberus taken care of for doing this. No matter how it happens, I just want it done.”

“Cerberus is already dead,” Shepard assures her. “They just don’t know it yet. And I know my opinion might not count much, but it’s thanks to you that we were able to get this lead and expose Sanctuary. If you hadn’t been able to track Kai Leng’s signal and lead us to Horizon, I’d probably still be moping around over Thessia.”

“I was only doing my job.” Samantha’s reply is not necessarily out of any sort of modesty, but rather her reluctance to receive praise from Shepard. If this had happened before everything changed between her and Shepard, she’s sure that she would have been blushing from the praise. No color rises to her cheeks this time, however.

A moment of mutual hesitation passes between the two of them. Samantha glances at Shepard, who is chewing on her lower lip as if pondering what to say next. All she has to do is give a proper apology, Samantha thinks. It shouldn’t be that hard. No matter what hangups Shepard has about admitting that she did something wrong, that shouldn’t get in the way of doing the decency of fully owning up to what she did.

“Well, I should, uh, take a look at those emails,” Shepard says, taking feeble control of the situation. “Probably half of them are from people in the Alliance. I get the feeling that they’re going to have a lot to say about Sanctuary.” She sighs. “I’ll talk to you later, Traynor.”

“Yes, Commander. Let me know if you need to set up any calls on the QEC.”

She watches Shepard walk away from her, and she wonders whether there will ever be a time when she doesn’t have to watch Shepard go without feeling as if they can never return to the time before everything changed.


	11. Chapter 11

With the huge task of storming the Cerberus base looming on the horizon, Shepard surprises everyone one day with the announcement that with the Normandy due for routine retrofits, she is granting the entire crew a few days of shore leave on the Citadel. “I need both the Normandy and my crew in top form for what’s ahead,” she says to them, anticipating the objections to her encouragement for everyone to take a break when there are matters of galactic importance on the line. “We could all use a breather after everything that’s happened, anyway.”

In true Shepard fashion, however, not even shore leave passes by peacefully. What starts as an attempt on her life quickly turns into a mystery of identity theft involving an evil clone that wants to take the real Shepard’s place. After the events of what Joker dubs the “worst shore leave ever” settle down, however, things quickly go back to normal--well, as normal as things can be for the Normandy’s crew. It’s not long at all before the decision is made to throw a party for Shepard and all of her comrades, past and present, at the apartment that Admiral Anderson has gifted to her. Normally Samantha would question whether this is the best time for a party, but a chance to have fun and forget about the war might be what everyone needs right now.

Large parties are very close to the top of the list of things that make Samantha more anxious than she should. The only thing above it is public speaking, but both things involve being around large groups of people that include people she doesn’t know. The advantage of parties, though, is that it is socially acceptable for her to drink enough alcohol to maintain the necessary buzz that allows mingling and small talk to not be such a terrifying prospect. By the time the party is in full swing, she can’t deny that she’s having a good time. It’s certainly an enlightening experience to see Shepard and her comrades letting loose.

Samantha now stands behind the bar in the living room on the first floor. With her bartending experience, it’s always inevitable that she ends up making drinks for people at parties, and this night is no exception. For the past half-hour, she has been serving drinks to an interesting mix of people: Liara, Vega, Cortez, Garrus, and Tali. Before the party, she’s never really had the opportunity to interact with the latter two, and now she’s wishing that she’d gotten to know them earlier. Most of that is because Tali is an immense lightweight when it comes to alcohol, and so her antics have been one of the prime features of entertainment this evening.

“Whaddaya say we all do some nice old-fashioned shots?” Vega proposes to the group. “There enough shot glasses back there, Traynor?”

“Let’s see.” Samantha turns around, experiencing that moment of clarity when she realizes that she has drunk more than enough, since sudden movements make the room spin a little too much. “I’ve got one, two, three, four, five… wait, can Tali even do shots?”

“Can you do them through a straw?” Tali asks.

“Probably doesn’t have the same effect,” Cortez points out.

“Ah, Sparks is already pretty borracha,” says Vega. “She doesn’t need shots.”

“I’m fine,” Tali insists. “My fluit will slush it all out in no time. I mean, my suit will sush... oh, you know what I mean.” She hiccups loudly. Garrus’s mandibles flare in amusement.

“So that’s five shot glasses, then,” Samantha says, lining them up on the bar. “And a nice unopened bottle of tequila?”

“Yeah, tequila!" Vega exclaims in enthusiasm.

“I don’t suppose they make that in dextro variety, do they?” Garrus inquires. “Out of all my preferred ways to die, death via shots of levo alcohol is not at the top of that list.”

Samantha scans the alcohol bottles for anything else dextro besides the opened bottle of whiskey that she has been using to make Garrus’s drinks. “Looks like you’re out of luck,” she says. “You can do whiskey shots if you’d like.”

“Sounds a hell of a lot classier to me.” Garrus laughs.

“We are all _very_ classy here,” Liara replies, sounding almost offended. Her words make Samantha laugh so hard that she nearly overflows the glass that she is pouring. For some reason, seeing the usually reserved Liara behave in the most elegantly drunk way possible throughout the course of the evening never ceases to amuse her.

“Give me some of that whiskey too.” Tali pushes her now-empty glass across the table toward Samantha. “I don’t want to miss out on the fun.”

Samantha obligingly fills up the glass once she has finished pouring all the shot glasses. “Are we going to go all at once, then? Maybe on three--Vega!” she says indignantly, after he promptly downs his glass.

“Whoo!” he exclaims. “Damn, this shit is strong. C’mon, now the rest of you go.”

The rest of the group throws back their drinks as well--with the exception of Tali, who frantically sucks down her drink as fast as the straw that fits through the slit in her helmet permits her. The alcohol burns Samantha’s throat going down. Vega hadn’t been lying when he had commented on its strength.

“Man, I can’t remember the last time I did tequila shots,” says Cortez. “Really takes me back.”

“Can’t remember because it’s been so long or can’t remember ‘cause you got shitfaced?” Vega asks.

“Uh, probably a combination of both.” Cortez laughs. “But hey, after everything that’s happened, I think we all deserve a chance to let things get a little wild and crazy tonight.”

“You can say that again,” Samantha agrees. “I’m pouring round two.” She wishes that shot glasses weren’t so small. All the alcohol that she has drunk has seriously impaired her motor skills.

“You know, back when I was with C-Sec, we used to have this drinking game,” Garrus says. “Set up some target practice, everyone takes a turn shooting, and you do a shot for each successful shot to see who’s got the best aim after the most alcohol. And I try not to brag, but I won almost every single time.”

“You should challenge Shepard to that,” Vega suggests. “She’d whoop your ass.”

“Yes, but I’m the one who’s had to practically carry her back to the Normandy after she’s had too much to drink. That means I probably have the edge when it comes to tolerance.”

“Man, I don’t believe that,” says Cortez. “She’s got a cybernetic liver or something. She’d have to been doing shots of ryncol to get that drunk.”

“Fuckin’ hardcore,” Vega adds. Tali hiccups in agreement.

“Well, if you’re so doubtful, I can line up some empty bottles right here, call Shepard over, and see which one of us better.” It’s hard for Samantha to read the intricacies of turian facial expressions, but she guesses that Garrus’s look is a combination of smug and challenging.

“I don’t think Shepard would approve of anyone shooting things in the apartment,” Liara points out.

“I got a different game for us, then,” says Vega. “We go around and everyone does a shot and tells the best sex story that they have. And then they choose the next person to go. C’mon, it’ll be fun.”

“I don’t understand how that’s a game,” Garrus replies.

“It’s a way for us to get to know each other. And I know that we’ve all got stories to tell.” Vega looks at the group expectantly.

“Well, I’m in,” Samantha says. The alcohol has burned away any of the inhibitions that would prevent her from wanting to play this game under more sober circumstances. “And as your dispenser of drinks, I command you all to play as well.”

“All right, so as the one who came up with this game, I get to choose who goes first.” Vega raises a finger, circling it around to point at each of them until he settles on Liara. “I think we should hear from our favorite blue Prothean expert first.”

“Why me?” Liara’s response sounds distinctly irritated.

“‘Cause you’ve slept with Shepard and therefore probably have the best story. Now do a shot, Doc.”

Liara obediently takes a shot glass and downs it. “Well, as James was so kind to point out, my story involves one of the times that I was with Shepard. It was last year, soon after I’d become the Shadow Broker--”

Samantha’s huge, theatrical gasp interrupts her words. “You’re the Shadow Broker!” she exclaims in disbelief. Even with her alcohol-addled mind, everything falls into place regarding all of the monitors in Liara’s office and her abundance of covert communications.

“I thought everyone here knew that by now,” Liara says. “It’s not something that I exactly publicize, for obvious reasons. I was sure that EDI would have accidentally let it slip to everyone by now, though.”

“Well, I had no idea.” Samantha hopes that she’ll remember this tidbit of information in the morning, because Liara being the Shadow Broker is definitely something that needs follow-up questioning. Samantha has heard the rumors about Liara’s work in the information broker business, of course, but she’d never have guessed that she would end up being the most powerful and renowned broker in the galaxy.

“Don’t feel too bad, Traynor,” says Cortez. “I didn’t know about it either.”

“Yo, the two of you are interrupting her story.” Vega flaps his hands impatiently at them. “She hadn’t even gotten to the good part yet.”

“Anyway,” Liara presses on, “it was after I had become the Shadow Broker, and she invited me back to the Normandy for a night together. It was the first time we had, well, _joined_ since Cerberus had brought her back, and it was very… nice, I suppose.”

“I wonder what Shepard would think about having her sexual prowess described as merely ‘nice.’” Garrus sounds distinctly amused.

“I’ve got an idea.” Tali pauses to suck up a long drink from her glass, which is nearly empty by now. “Any of us are allowed to ask follow-up questions, and you either have to answer them or take another drink.”

“Are you trying to get me drunk?” Liara replies in mock offense.

“More like ‘more drunk,’” Samantha corrects her with a laugh.

“All right, I got another question.” Vega raises his hand as if they’re in a classroom. “What was your favorite thing about Shepard in bed?”

“You know, you seem awfully curious about Shepard’s sex life for someone who’s said that you’d be too terrified to sleep with her,” Cortez points out.

“Ooh, we are most definitely coming back to that later,” Samantha says. The idea of a big, brawny marine like Vega being scared of Commander Shepard is infinitely amusing to her.

Liara glances down at the filled shot glass in front of her, considering whether she is going to take the drink to avoid having to answer Vega’s question. Samantha is certain that Liara will go for the drink, but instead she gives a response.

“Well, to give an answer that you can each draw your own conclusions about, Shepard has, ah… She has a very… supple tongue.” Liara’s cheeks flush a shade of reddish-purple as she avoids looking anyone in the eye.

“Oh my God, I know what you mean.” The words leave Samantha’s mouth before she realizes that she is saying them. The alcohol in her system has utterly destroyed the inner filter that would usually prevent her from revealing something like this.

Everyone stares at her, their expressions a mix of curiosity, interest, and surprise. Now it is her turn to blush.

“Please tell me I didn't say that out loud,” she says in horror. She wants nothing more than to crawl under the bar and curl up into a ball of embarrassment. That would certainly be a more preferable option to having to face everyone after the implications of what she has revealed.

“That sounded pretty out loud to me,” Tali replies.

“And I think I speak for everyone,” Garrus adds, “when I ask why you’re able to make comments on Shepard’s tongue.”

Another awkward silence falls. Samantha hears the metaphorical wheels turning in everyone's heads as they follow her statement to its logical conclusion. Liara is the first one to speak up.

“You slept with Shepard!” Her words come out in the same dramatic tone of voice that Samantha had used when expressing her disbelief that Liara is the Shadow Broker. It’s not a question or an accusation, but rather a surprised observation. “That explains so much!”

“Niiiiiice,” Vega says in approval. “You got balls, going after the Commander. Man, that explains why you were so weird around Kaidan a while back. Wait, she’s not, like, dating both of you at once, is she?”

“Oh, bugger it all,” Samantha groans. She rests her head on the cool surface of the bar’s counter to avoid having to look at everyone. The last thing she wants to do is drunkenly recount the emotional turmoil that Shepard has directly and indirectly put her through, but she suspects that she is going to be pestered into explaining herself no matter how much she tries to avoid it.

“Fine,” she says, lifting her head up from the counter. “If you must know, it was just one time, before Major Alenko had even rejoined the crew. And yes, it was brilliant and everything, but I really don’t want to talk about it. And it would be fantastic if you wouldn’t mention this to anyone else either.”

The room is quiet, and Samantha is sure that a dozen questions hover on everyone’s lips. When she’s about to down the nearest shot to give herself something else to focus on (and to attempt to forget the mortification that comes from accidentally admitting things that she’d rather not talk about), Tali breaks through the silence with a loud hiccup.

“Did you know that Garrus Vakarian is really great in bed?” Her words come out with too much measured significance to be a mere observation based on hearsay. The way that she grabs hold of Garrus’s arm to snuggle up closer to him reinforces this point.

“And when she says ‘Garrus Vakarian,’ she’s obviously talking about someone else and not, uh, me.” Garrus clears his throat in an awkward sound.

Samantha is eternally grateful to Tali for creating a distraction by revealing her own piece of information that makes everyone go silent and stare at her. “Well,” Liara says. “I certainly did not see that one coming.”

“Wait, are you two…” Vega gestures between the two of them. “Does this mean that Esteban and I are the only ones in this group who _haven’t_ slept with someone else in the crew?”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” says Cortez.

“Anyway,” Vega presses on, “how does that work? Is it even possible for turians and quarians to, you know, do it together?”

“Of course it’s possible.” Tali speaks as if this is the most obvious thing in the world. Samantha wouldn’t be surprised if she was rolling her eyes underneath her mask. “Haven’t any of you seen _Fleet and Flotilla_?” At the blank stares she receives in response, she shakes her head. “Uncultured bosh’tets.”

“I changed my mind,” Samantha declares. “Your game is the worst game ever, Vega, and you are a terrible person for suggesting it.” She reaches out in an unconscious motion, her hand closing around a shot glass. Even though she has arrived at the point where the alcohol has made everything a little fuzzier than she’d like, she brings the glass to her lips, letting the tequila burn her throat as it goes down. The one tiny part of her mind that holds onto sobriety whispers that she shouldn’t drink any more. Samantha mentally tells this voice to shut up.

The night continues on, despite her lingering embarrassment and decrying of Vega’s choice of drinking games. All things have to come to an end eventually, though, and when the night eventually winds down, Samantha staggers off to try to find a place to sleep. By some miracle, she finds a deserted couch in one of the rooms on the ground floor. She collapses down on the cushions, her body screaming in protest at the shift in her center of gravity. Lying down does feel pretty good, though, once her body gets accustomed to it.

She doesn’t know how long she lies there in her groggy, drunken state, hovering somewhere on the brink of sleep. At some point, she hears footsteps signifying someone’s arrival into the room, and she blearily opens her eyes and lifts her head to recognize the smooth metallic blue and silver form of EDI’s body.

“Am I on your couch, EDI?” she asks. Her tongue is heavy in her mouth, and she has to take care to speak deliberately to avoid slurring her words.

“No, Samantha, you are fine.” EDI tilts her head to one side, taking in the sorry sight of Samantha drunkenly curled up on the couch. “Upon closer inspection, however, you do not look fine.”

“Too much to drink.” she groans. She tries to remember when she had last seen EDI at the party. Not since the fairly embarrassing conversation that they’d had about her attraction to EDI’s voice, and that predates her heavier drinking by a couple of hours. “I don’t think I’ve been this drunk since I was at university. Tomorrow is going to be awful.”

“My observations of the various levels of inebriation that the guests have shown tonight have been enlightening,” EDI says. “You seem to have reached the level of what Jeff would call ‘shitfaced.’ Or, to use a less vulgar term, you have ‘gone over to the bad place.’”

“I am most definitely in the bad place.” At least Samantha is aware of herself enough to realize this. “I blame tequila shots and Commander Shepard’s tongue.”

“I do not see what Shepard’s tongue has to do with anything.” EDI sits down on the couch next to where Samantha’s legs curl up.

“Because that’s what made me drunkenly tell everyone about how I slept with her. And now it’s what’s making me drunkenly tell you about how I slept with her.” Samantha turns her head to bury her face in the pillow in her embarrassment.

“Oh, I was already aware of your dalliance with Shepard.” EDI’s voice is annoyingly calm in response to her words. “She neglected to make use of her cabin’s privacy mode during the encounter. I used this knowledge to test my ‘concealing a secret’ programming. I have been very good at adhering to the protocol of the programming thus far.”

“Of course you already knew.” The pillow muffles Samantha’s words. “You probably already know about how she broke my heart too.”

“I was not aware of any emotional reaction that you might have had in response to the encounter,” EDI replies. “Reading the subtleties of organic behavior is not my speciality, although I have been improving.”

Samantha groans into the pillow in response. “Well, basically I was a big, stupid idiot for thinking that something would actually come out of us sleeping together. And now I've spent far too long being upset over everything that happened.” She turns her head to look at EDI. “But I’m totally over it now. I’m happy for them. Her and Major Alenko and his perfect biotic arse.” The bitterness in her response belies the sentiment of her words.

“I thought that you did not experience any sort of attraction toward males.”

“Everyone is attracted to Kaidan’s arse.”

“That is very interesting. I will have to ask Jeff his opinion on that matter.”

“Please don’t,” Samantha begs. The last thing she needs is more embarrassment, since she is sure that EDI would bring her name into a question like that.

She sighs, looking up at the ceiling above her. “You know, things would have been a lot easier if I never let myself fall for her in the first place.” The words fall out of her mouth, spurred on by the part of her brain that thinks that drunkenly rambling to an AI is a good idea. “Then I wouldn’t have ever had sex with her, and it wouldn’t even matter that she’s with Kaidan. And then things would have been so much simpler, like back when my biggest problem besides the Reapers killing everyone was me being attracted to an AI’s voice. Which isn’t even a problem, as you’ve made abundantly clear.”

She turns her gaze back to EDI. The form of her body shines in the dim light of the room. “Maybe I should have slept with you instead.”

“I do not think that would have been an advisable course of action.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” Samantha blinks, trying to refocus the hazy sight of EDI sitting next to her. “Joker wouldn’t like that. Oh, who am I kidding? He’d probably want to watch. Maybe instead you should whisper dirty things in my ear or something. Or they don’t even have to be dirty. You could read every bloody technical manual on the Normandy and it’d still make my panties wet.”

“Samantha?” EDI sounds even more infinitely patient than usual, if that’s possible.

“Yes, EDI?”

“You are very drunk.”

“I knoooow.” She draws that last word out in irritation, hating how EDI is stating the obvious. “And oh, God, I was just propositioning you, wasn’t I? I shouldn’t be allowed to talk anymore. I should rip out my tongue and that would solve all my problems. Although you’d have to build a time machine and go back and rip my tongue out before I drunkenly told people about that night I was with Commander Shepard and before I drunkenly hit on you. Or I’d just go back and tell myself not to make a fool out of myself.”

“I do not recommend removing your tongue,” EDI says. “Furthermore, your present self talking to your past self would have the potential to create a paradox that would interrupt the fabric of the space-time continuum.”

Samantha groans in frustration. She wants to say that she wishes that EDI didn’t always have to take everything so literally. Before she gets the words out, though, her stomach twists unpleasantly in a sudden surge of nausea, screaming in protest at the large amount of alcohol in her system. She closes her mouth against her body’s threats to retch, willing herself not to throw up all over the couch.

“Are you feeling unwell?” inquires EDI.

“I think I’m going to be sick.”

She mentally gauges the distance between her current location and the nearest toilet. If she gets up now, she might be able to make it. Moving as quickly as her body will allow her, she stands up from the couch and stumbles toward the bathroom. She doesn’t realize that EDI is following behind her until she feels the cool metal sensation of her arm across her back, helping her remain upright.

Samantha barely makes it in time before she leans forward and spills the contents of her stomach into the toilet. She coughs, shifting to kneel down on the bathroom floor to make herself a little more comfortable. The taste of vomit remains in her mouth, and she wishes that she had thought to bring a toothbrush with her. Too bad Shepard has damaged her Cision Pro Mark 4 when using its mass effect fields to break open a hatch during the clone incident.

Her stomach churns again, and she promptly throws up for a second time. “I must be a really sorry sight right now,” she says to EDI, who has been watching her from the doorway. “Getting sick from drinking like this. God, I hate throwing up.” She wipes her mouth. The vomit-taste lingers, although at least her nausea has settled down.

“When you are feeling better,” EDI replies, “I suggest that you rest. I will get you whatever you need.”

“Thanks.” Samantha slowly gets to her feet once more, flushing the toilet before leaving the bathroom. The walk back to the couch that she previously occupied feels like an eternity to her weary limbs. She curls up on the couch once more, getting as comfortable as possible. At first, she fears that EDI has abandoned her, but soon enough the AI returns with a blanket and a glass of water. She hands her the water and gently drapes the blanket over her.

“I will stay here in case you need anything else.” EDI sounds remarkably motherly for an AI. Samantha briefly wonders whether she has taken care of any other drunk people this evening, or if this is her first opportunity to test out any “taking care of drunk people” programming that she has.

Samantha tries to mumble out more words of gratitude, but she is too tired to form any meaningful statement. She finishes her glass of water, and by the time she lays back down on the couch, she hardly remembers anything else before drifting off to sleep.

 

* * *

 

The next morning, as Samantha has predicted, she awakens with a terrible headache as an immediate signifier of her hangover. After a cup of coffee and one serving of Vega’s eggs, she feels a little better, although she’s sure that her head will be pounding for the rest of the day. Her memories of the previous night exist in bits and pieces, and she’s not entirely sure which parts are real and which parts she has dreamed up. She decides that it’s better not to ask about what happened. She remembers enough to be completely embarrassed by most of her actions, and the last thing she wants to do is revisit those sources of mortification.

By that afternoon, which turns out to be only a couple of hours after everyone leaves Shepard’s apartment, the Normandy’s retrofits have been completed. The crew gathers at the docking bay to board the ship, and the atmosphere is much more subdued than it usually is at the end of shore leave. Part of that has to do with over half of the people who had been at Shepard’s party being hungover to some degree, but the more likely reason is because once they are onboard the Normandy, reality will ensue once again. It has been all too easy to forget about the enormous tasks ahead of them while enjoying themselves on the Citadel, but with Shepard preparing to lead an assault on the Cerberus base, everyone has a lot of work ahead of them. That party may have been the last chance they all had to enjoy a few moments of peace together.

She sees Shepard and Kaidan engaged in quiet conversation nearby. Their hands are entwined together, a rare display of public affection between them. Samantha is fairly certain that this is the first time that she has seen them show physical indication of their relationship in public, apart from the moment that she witnessed at Apollo’s Cafe. Even at the party their gestures of affection in front of the other guests had been limited to stolen glances and subtle flirtation.

“It’s strange how difficult going to back to the Normandy is,” Liara says from where she stands beside Samantha. “Part of me wishes that we could stay here forever.”

“I don’t think Commander Shepard would do well with extended shore leave,” Samantha replies. Her eyes remain on the Commander and Kaidan. Shepard leans in a little closer to him, and he lets go of her hand to encircle an arm around her waist. “She couldn’t even take a few days off without someone trying to kill her. And if she didn’t have someone coming after her, I imagine she’d become bored rather quickly.”

“That is true.” Liara’s gaze follows Samantha’s to rest upon Shepard and Kaidan. A slight frown sets itself upon her lips. “It looks like they have forgotten the meaning of discretion.”

Even from this distance, Samantha notices Shepard’s peaceful smile. It must be nice, Samantha thinks, for Shepard to have someone who can bring that kind of tranquility to her no matter what struggles might lie ahead of her. If only Samantha could have been the same kind of support to Shepard--but that longing has passed by now.

“I have to admit that the two of them getting together isn’t something that I would have expected,” Liara continues on. “But if having that degree of closeness with someone is going to be the thing that helps her get through this war, then she deserves it. No matter whether it is with someone who isn’t me. Or you, for that matter.”

Samantha has spent so long focused on her own reactions to Shepard and Kaidan’s relationship that she has barely given thought to how Liara, Shepard’s last long-term lover, is dealing with her being in a new relationship. Even though Liara has shown nothing but civility and occasional concern for Shepard since their breakup, her inner feelings probably tell an entirely different story.

Samantha watches Shepard move away from Kaidan, walking down to where the Normandy is docked. The way that his eyes linger on her as she walks away from him speaks for itself.

“She will pull us through this,” Liara continues on. “Goddess knows she’s not perfect.. But I don’t think I would trust someone who’s perfect to do something of this magnitude. Her flaws are what has helped her become one of the galaxy’s greatest. I am sure that you have come to recognize this as well.”

Samantha nods. Here it is again: the dichotomy between Shepard the hero and Shepard the woman. Liara’s words, however, make her realize that perhaps she has been looking at Shepard all wrong over the past few months. She has previously regarded the two sides of Shepard as separate entities: the hero to adore and have complete faith in and the woman to be disappointed by and frustrated with. These parts are merely two halves of one whole, though. Maybe the only way to truly understand Shepard is to accept both halves of her, rather than trying to reconcile each part of her independently from the other. Maybe that’s yet another step she needs to take in her continued attempt to put behind what has happened between her and Shepard.

“Yes,” Samantha agrees in response to what Liara has said. “She’ll definitely get us through everything. She has to.”

There had once been a time when she’d had complete faith in Commander Shepard. There had also been a time when she had doubted her, seeing her as the fallible human being that she is. Now, however, Samantha realizes that despite the complications that have driven her and the Commander apart, she has never lost the belief that Shepard will be the one to save them all.


	12. Chapter 12

Life on the Normandy becomes even busier in the days and weeks following their shore leave as everyone prepares for the assault on the Cerberus headquarters. According to Shepard’s latest report from Admiral Hackett, the Crucible is nearing completion, and the key to the final state of its construction may be located somewhere within the Cerberus headquarters. The end of the war may truly be at hand, no matter which way the ultimate fight against the Reapers goes.

Near the end of Samantha’s evening shift one day, she is looking forward to have the chance to get a little extra rest after having to work overtime much more often than usual. Her comm’s notification of an incoming message startles her, and when she sees that the call is from Shepard, her expectations of stopping her work at a reasonable hour are swiftly dashed. She cannot think of any other reason why Shepard would contact her at this hour other than to give her another task to do.

“Yes, Commander?” she says into her comm.

“I know you’re off for the night soon, so if you’re not doing anything, I’d like to talk to you. You’re welcome to come up whenever you have the time.”

Samantha doesn’t want to read into this invitation too much. It’s hard not to, though, considering the last time Shepard specifically requested her presence in her cabin they’d ended up sleeping together. After everything that has happened, she doesn’t know why Shepard would choose this particular moment to talk to her privately. At least she can find a little bit of comfort in that Shepard has not given her more work to do.

“Yes, Commander,” she says. “I’ll be up as soon as I finish everything down here.”

Several minutes later, when she’s in the elevator going up to Shepard’s cabin, she concludes that the progression of her interactions with Shepard can easily be summed up by the range of emotions that she has experienced during the elevator ride to Deck 1. First there had been the nerves, whether they stemmed from meeting Commander Shepard the legend, having a borderline date with her, or dealing with the aftermath of the night that they’d had together. Once she had begun the long process of getting over Shepard, there had been the trepidation of having to talk to her in the wake of one of the biggest failures that they’ve had to face during the war. Now, she faces only confusion as to what Shepard wants to talk to her about. It’s an anti-climatic ending to the progression, all things considered.

Samantha enters the cabin through the unlocked door. She expects Shepard to be waiting for her, sitting at her desk or on the couch as she works. She is nowhere to be found, however, despite having been the one to extend the invitation to Samantha in the first place.

“Commander?” she calls out hesitantly.

“In here.” Shepard’s response echoes from the direction of the bathroom. Her voice doesn’t sound like it’s coming from behind a closed door, and so Samantha rounds the corner to enter the bathroom. Memories of what happened last time she had been in this room enter her mind unbidden. _No, don’t think about that_ , she tells herself firmly. 

Shepard stands in front of the sink with a pair of scissors in her hands. She stares at her reflection in the mirror, chewing on her bottom lip in concentration as she trims her bangs. Tiny clumps of blonde hair cling to the basin of the sink, barely visible from where Samantha stands in the doorway.

“Sorry,” she says. “I was hoping I’d be done by the time you came up. Can’t take down the Reapers with my hair in my eyes, you know.” She threads her bangs between two fingers, making sure that the lengths fall the way she wants. “I’d been thinking about letting them grow out again, but then I’d have to worry about keeping them pinned back until they’re long enough, and the whole reason why I keep my hair short in the first place is so I don’t have to worry about things like that, so…” She trails off there, stopping before she strays too far off topic. “Anyway, I’ll be done in a second. You can have a seat wherever in the meantime.”

“Yes, Commander,” Samantha replies, unable to think of anything else to say in response. She goes out and sits on the couch, listening to the sound of running water as Shepard rinses the sink. The table in front of the couch is littered with various datapads, indicating that she had been working here before deciding to play hairdresser on herself.

Thankfully, Samantha doesn’t have to wait long, which gives her less time to mentally speculate about why she has been called up to her cabin. When Shepard sits down on the other side of the couch, Samantha decides to take the initiative in the conversation.

“So, you wanted to talk?” she asks.

“Yeah. I know this might sound like it’s a little out of nowhere, but… well, I get the feeling that things are going to start moving really quickly soon with the war and Cerberus and the Reapers, and so I figure I should say what I want to say sooner rather than later.” Shepard hesitates, exhaling a slow breath. “I feel like I owe you a formal apology for how I handled things between us a while back.”

“You mean after we slept together and you could barely bring yourself to talk to me because you were too busy falling in love with Major Alenko.” Samantha’s response comes out harsher than she has intended.

Shepard winces, as if the words have struck her across the face. “Yeah, that. Damn it, I was a real bitch, wasn’t I?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say ‘bitch,’ exactly,” Samantha says, even though she had referred to Shepard as exactly that back when the pain over seeing her and Kaidan together had been a new and raw ache in her chest.

Shepard gives a weak laugh. “I get that you’re trying to be nice, but it’s something that I need to own up to. Because I really was a bitch. I was stupid and selfish and _really_ unprofessional about the whole thing. I basically took advantage of you because you were clearly interested in me, but I only wanted to be with you to take my mind off my own problems. And I know that I’ve already said that I didn’t mean to hurt you, but that doesn’t change the fact that I _did_ hurt you. And for that, I’m… I couldn’t be more sorry.” She shifts in her seat in a self-conscious motion. “I know it might be too late to say something like that, but I hope you can forgive me.”

“I don’t think it’s too late,” Samantha replies. “I mean, it’s not like you can exactly take back what you did. And for a while I didn’t think that I could ever accept how you essentially emotionally abandoned me back then. But…  I don’t know. A lot has happened since then, and I’ve had a lot of time to think about it. I’m not going to turn around and say that what you did wasn’t wrong, because I think both of us know that it was. But I’ve also been trying to move on from all of it, so… I guess I forgive you in that sense. Even though it’s taken me a while to do that.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear that.” A quiet sigh of relief escapes from Shepard.

“I do have one thing to ask you, though.” Samantha grips the edge of the couch cushions, hoping that she can get her question out before she loses the nerve to ask it. It is something that she has always wanted to know, but until now she had been unsure as to whether she’d ever have the chance to discover the answer. “Did you know that you had feelings for Kaidan when you were with me?”

Shepard doesn’t say anything at first. Her teeth worry at her bottom lip as she ponders her answer, and Samantha wonders if she even has an adequate response. “I suppose the best way to put it,” she says finally, “would be that part of the reason why I slept with you was because I was trying to convince myself that I didn’t have feelings for him. Which I know is incredibly unfair to you, but--well, we’ve already established that I handled everything terribly. So... there you have it.” Her eyes are uncertain as she looks to Samantha for her response.

Samantha isn’t sure whether that was the answer that she wanted. If she had gotten this answer in an earlier point in time, she would have hated Shepard even more for giving a response like this. Even now, a small twinge of anger nags at her upon hearing Shepard’s confession that she may have very well been thinking of someone else during their time together. The pain of Shepard choosing Kaidan over her is now an old ache, however, and so her emotions do not rise as high as they could have done at a prior time.

“You know, for a while I practically hated you,” Samantha admits. “Because you were with him instead of me and treated me like rubbish in the process. And I wanted to hate him for taking you from me, even though I didn’t exactly have any claim to you in the first place. But then…” She breaks off there. When she continues speaking, she keeps her eyes focused on her knees. “Then I decided that I can’t really change how you feel, and thinking about what could have been won’t really help me. Maybe it felt like giving up, but I think it was part of moving on from you too. I don’t know, maybe I’m just too forgiving of a person.”

“I don’t think that’s anything to be ashamed of,” Shepard says. “I think the galaxy needs more forgiving people sometimes.”

Silence falls between them. When Shepard speaks again, she hesitates cautiously around her words. “So... are we good, then?”.

Samantha meets her eyes once more. “Yeah. I--I think we are.” A strange sense of relief passes through her. Formally clearing the air between them has provided more closure than she has anticipated. “So, er, is that everything that you wanted to talk about?”

“Yeah, that just about covers everything.” Shepard runs a hand through her newly trimmed bangs. “Unless you have anything else that you want to say.”

“Well,” Samantha begins, deciding that she should let Shepard be aware of at least one of the embarrassing things that had happened at the party on the Citadel, since they’d been on the subject of the night they spent together. “You, er, you might have heard about this already, but at your party I got really drunk and ended up telling most of your squad that we slept together.” She cringes in embarrassment at the memory.

“Huh. That definitely explains something James was saying to me a few days ago.” Shepard’s response is more nonchalant than she expects. “Something about you liking my tongue?”

Samantha’s cheeks burn scarlet. A distinct desire to murder Vega crosses her mind. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Shepard laughs, no more than a brief chuckle. “Don’t worry about it too much. I think all of us have something that happened at that party that we’re embarrassed about.” She doesn’t give any follow-up to this statement, leaving Samantha to make her own guess as to what could have possibly embarrassed Shepard at the party.

“Anyway,” Shepard continues, “I should let you rest. You look exhausted.”

“Only if you agree to get some rest too, Commander.” By this point, Samantha can’t remember the last time she saw Shepard without dark circles hanging under her eyes to indicate her lack of sleep.

“You worried about me, Traynor?” The left side of Shepard’s mouth quirks up into half a smile.

“No, ma’am,” she replies hastily. “Just reminding you to get a good night’s sleep once in a while.”

“Hmm. You sound like Kaidan.” The way that Shepard’s lips smile around his name reveals far more about how she feels about him than her words ever could. “Anyway, have a good night. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

“You too, Commander. Good night.”

Their exchange of words is nearly identical to the farewell that they had given each other after the night they’d spent together, but the difference in context shows how much has changed between them. No matter how hard it has been for apology and forgiveness to occur, however, Samantha knows that this is the final step that she has needed to take in the process of putting aside what had happened that night.

 

* * *

 

Several days later, the time finally arrives for the assault on the Cerberus headquarters. With Admiral Hackett’s help, Shepard has gathered the necessary Alliance fleets that she needs to stage the invasion. All that’s left is for them to arrive at the Cronos Station area and wait for the call that all of the fleets are prepared for the attack.

Samantha has been busy managing all of the comm channels necessary for the mission, but now her only task left is to notify Shepard that everything is ready for the call for action to come through when the time arrives. According to EDI, Shepard has gone into the comm room to make a last-minute call, and so that is where Samantha goes to find her.

From what she can determine as she hovers outside the doorway to the comm room, Shepard has already placed the call through. Samantha wonders who she could be contacting, since she has already recently spoken to Admiral Hackett and Admiral Anderson. She peers around the doorway in an attempt to get a glimpse of the image of the person on the vid comm. Before she sees anything for herself, the sound of a woman’s voice addressing Shepard by the first name that nobody on the Normandy uses followed by Shepard’s response of “Hi, Mom” immediately indicates that the Commander is talking to her mother.

“It’s so nice to hear from you again,” says Rear Admiral Shepard. “I hear that you’re going to get started with the assault against Cerberus in a few hours.”

Samantha can now get a good view of the holographically projected image. She immediately sees the resemblance between her and Commander Shepard: even if she hadn’t known, she could have easily guessed that Shepard is talking to her mother. They have the same eyes, same nose, same jawline. The only noticeable differences are the older Shepard’s graying hair and age-lined face.

“Yeah,” Shepard replies. “Until then, it’s just a waiting game.”

“How are you feeling?” her mother asks with the concerned tone that is so characteristic of a worried parent.

“Fine.” Even Samantha can tell that Shepard’s response is a lie. She gives the answer too quickly for it to be an honest representation of her feelings.

“Yes, but how are you _really_ feeling? Not what you tell your crew so they don’t worry about you.”

Shepard gives a slight sigh at her mother’s acknowledgment of her lie. Her exhale shakes a little. “Terrified,” she admits.

“Fear is a good thing,” her mother reminds her. “Sometimes a little fear is all you need to give you that extra push that you need to do what has to be done.”

“I know.” Shepard shifts her weight slightly from one foot to the other in an uneasy motion. “It’s just… I get the feeling that all of the pressure that’s been on me over the past few months is going to come to a head really soon.”

“And you’re afraid that you’re not going to live up to everyone’s expectations.” Her mother gives a knowing nod. “I know how hard it must be for you. But even if you don’t realize it yourself, these people have a good reason to put all their hopes on you. Just look at what you’ve done over the course of this war alone. It might not seem like great advice, but I think if you keep doing what you’ve been doing, it’ll be enough.”

“But what if I fail?” Shepard’s response is almost too quiet for Samantha to hear. The question trembles as it leaves her mouth, laying bare what sounds like her deepest insecurity.

“Listen to me, honey.” Rear Admiral Shepard’s voice is equally quiet and noticeably more serious. “Don’t think about failure. If you go into this thinking about the possibility that you’re going to fail, that will color your performance. And if everything doesn’t turn out the way that you expect, I know that the most of the galaxy will think that you did your best. _I’ll_ think that you did your best. Because I know you better than anyone, and I know that you’d never give anything less than the very best that you have to offer.”

“Thanks,” Shepard replies, a little bit of relief seeping into her voice. A brief quiet moment passes between mother and daughter, now that Shepard’s most pressing worry has been at least temporarily put to rest.

“So,” Rear Admiral Shepard says, breaking the silence between them. “What are you going to do while you wait?”

“Probably go to my cabin and double-check all the information and data that I have. Maybe get a little rest if I have the time.” Shepard runs a weary hand across her forehead as she says those last few words.

“Yes, you look absolutely exhausted. But if I know you, you’re not going to end up resting at all.”

“Yeah, well, I haven’t really been sleeping much lately,” Shepard admits. "Too much to do. And even when I have time to get a few hours of sleep, I have nightmares that just end up waking me up again.”

This is the first time  that Samantha has heard anything about Shepard having nightmares. She has previously assumed that her sleeplessness has only resulted from a combination of her workload and general insomnia.

“You know, I’m not surprised about the nightmares,” says Rear Admiral Shepard. “When you were little, there was this one stretch of time when it felt like almost every night you would wake up screaming from a bad dream.”

“Really?” A slight frown crosses Shepard’s lips. “I don’t remember that.”

“You must have been around eight or nine, I think. I know it was during the first posting that I had after your father died. Anyway, you started getting these nightmares all of a sudden, and you’d wake up practically inconsolable. Screaming, crying. It got to the point when you started telling me that you were afraid to go to sleep because you knew that the nightmares would come.”

“Yeah, I definitely don’t remember this,” says Shepard. “Maybe I’ve blocked it out or something. Sounds like it would have been a real pain in the ass for you.”

“Well, I was scared as well,” her mother replies. “No matter how many times I asked, you’d never tell me what the dreams were about. I ended up having to bring you to the ship’s doctor about it. It was determined that it was probably a psychological response to your father’s death, and after a while the nightmares ended up going away on their own.”

“Yeah, I’ve been told that the nightmares I’ve been having lately are likely stress related.” Shepard gives a quiet sigh. “I’ve mostly got it under control, though. You really don’t need to worry.”

“I’m your mother. Of course I’m going to worry.” Rear Admiral Shepard laughs before adopting a more serious tone. “Just know that no matter how things turn out, I will always be proud of you.”

“Thanks. I mean… I know you’re kind of obligated to say those kinds of things. But it still means a lot.”

“And one last thing,” her mother says. “Please stay alive. That’s an order. I’ve already lost you once, and I don’t want to lose you again.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Shepard responds with the same obedient efficiency that she uses with Hackett or Anderson, as if she has momentarily forgotten that Rear Admiral Shepard is her mother. “I’ll try.”

“I don’t want you to try.” Her mother’s words are kind yet stern. “I need you to--”

“--believe that you’ll stay alive.” Shepard finishes the sentence for her, as if it is part of a long-rehearsed routine between the two of them. “You know, I never thought I’d miss you saying that, but I have.”

Another silence falls between them. “Well,” Shepard says finally, “I should go. Hopefully I’ll have a chance to talk to you again soon.”

“Of course. I love you so much, honey. Stay safe out there.”

“Love you too, Mom.” Hearing Shepard express such simple words of love to her mother reminds Samantha more than ever that despite everything the Commander has done, she has the same basic human emotions as everyone else. “Shepard out.”

“Shepard out,” her mother echoes her. Mother and daughter salute each other before Shepard disconnects from the vid comm. Samantha quickly moves so that Shepard won’t see that she has been listening. She doubles back into the room once Shepard has turned away from the vid comm, pretending that she has only recently entered.

“Commander,” she says in greeting.

“Traynor,” Shepard replies. “What’s our status?”

“Ready to go, ma’am. We’re awaiting our arrival at the Anadius system. EDI will notify you when you should start preparing for direct assault.”

“Good.” She runs a hand through her hair in an idle motion. “Is that all you have to update me on?”

“Yes, Commander.” Samantha is about to turn to leave the comm room, but Shepard’s voice pulls her back.

“So what did you think of my mom?”

“I--how did you--” Samantha stammers out in response, completely embarrassed that Shepard had noticed her earlier presence. She should have realized that no amount of discretion is enough to escape the eyes of Commander Shepard.

“It’s no fault of your own. I’ve just got a pretty good sense of knowing when I’m being watched.”

“I’m sorry,” says Samantha. “I didn’t mean to intrude upon anything. I heard you were in the comm room and--”

“Relax,” Shepard assures her. “I’m not angry or anything. In fact, I’d almost rather it was you overhearing me than most of the other people on this ship.”

Samantha doesn’t ask what she means by this. She suspects it has to do with her being one of the few who has seen Shepard at some of her worst emotional moments, and so her overhearing a heartfelt conversation with Rear Admiral Shepard is not as revealing to her as it could be to anyone else.

“I can see why people say that you and your mother are a lot alike,” Samantha says. Hearing the two Shepards talk has been like listening to Commander Shepard talk to an older and wiser reflection of herself. Samantha now knows where Shepard has learned her ability to offer the perfect words to ease her crew’s worries.

“Yeah, she raised me well,” Shepard replies. “We fought like crazy when I was a teenager, though. Mostly over me wanting to join the military, oddly enough. She was always insistent that I choose my own path and not be pressured to follow in her footsteps. But of course that's what I ended up doing anyway. I probably took from her example a lot more than I realize.”

Samantha imagines a teenaged Shepard, quick-tempered and terribly stubborn. It’s a strange thing to think about. “In any event, it must have been nice for the two of you to talk,” she says.

“Yeah. Sometimes all you need is a parent to tell you that it’s going to be all right, you know?”

Samantha nods, understanding the feeling completely. “I should let you take care of whatever last-minute work you have to do,” she says. “And if we don’t have a chance to talk again before you hit the Cerberus base, good luck.”

“Thanks.” A small smile breaks its way through Shepard’s expression. “I’ll see you when all of this is over.”

“Yes, Commander.” Hearing the confidence in Shepard’s voice gives Samantha an even greater sense of hope. No matter how much Shepard doubts herself, she can still find the strength to assure others that everything will turn out all right.

And despite what might happen in the future as the war hurtles toward its inevitable conclusion, Samantha will hold on to that hope.


	13. Chapter 13

Uncertainty is near the top of the list of the things that Samantha hates, and when this uncertainty concerns whether Commander Shepard is alive, she’s not sure how much longer she can bear it. Sure, she should be thankful that she herself has survived and that the scarlet beams that shot out from the Crucible in the critical moment of the assault on Earth hadn’t destroyed the Normandy. However, being crash-landed on an unfamiliar planet with the comms inactive isn’t exactly a fate that she’d choose for herself.

They piece together what has happened with the very few clues that they have, and although the general conclusion is that whatever Shepard did after being beamed into the Crucible worked, the victory is not without losses. Whatever has destroyed the Reapers has wiped out all synthetic life with it, which means that EDI and the robotic body that she once occupied now lie inactive, unresponsive to the engineering crew’s attempts to get her back online. No matter how much Joker insists that they can find someone to rebuild her once they’re flying again, the prospects look dim, and it doesn’t change the fact that repairs are going as slow as ever without her aid.

“They rebuilt Commander fucking Shepard after she’d been spaced,” Joker says, firmly in the stage of denial. “They can rebuild an AI.”

But the mood immediately darkens when he brings up Shepard, reminding the crew that the possibility that she is dead is very real. Samantha refuses to believe it, as if her hope that Shepard is alive somewhere is enough to actually keep her alive. As time goes on, however, and they remain as isolated as ever on whatever planet they’ve crashed on with no communication from the Alliance, everyone has had to slowly accept that Shepard may not be coming back this time.

Samantha’s tasks of repairing the comm system and helping solve miscellaneous issues on the ship keep her busy in the days that pass after the assault on Earth. Getting the comms to work on a local level has been an easy fix, but being able to send successful transmissions beyond their crash site has been a much more difficult feat. She has had absolutely no luck with the QEC, and the regular comms aren’t faring much better. The only conclusion she has been able to come to is that whatever took out the Reapers has damaged the comm buoys across the galaxy as well.

“How’s your progress?” Kaidan asks her one afternoon, checking in on her work in the comm room. In Shepard’s absence, he has unofficially taken over the position of commanding officer, being the highest ranked officer on the ship. Samantha can tell that he is trying to follow Shepard’s example of strong, confident leadership, but the look on his face indicates to her as clear as ever that he is a man lost in the wake of a loved one’s uncertain fate.

“It’s hit and miss, to be honest,” she replies in response to his inquiry. “I can sometimes get static, but…”

“That’s good, right?”

“Yes and no,” she explains. “Static doesn’t necessarily mean reception. But it also means the comms are at least able to pick something up, even if it’s just white noise.”

“Well, you might have better luck once we’re flying again. Which I keep hoping will be any day now, but…” He trails off. “The drive core needs a lot of work before it’s fully operational again. Tali and the other engineers are working as hard as they can, but without EDI’s help it’s slow going.”

Samantha murmurs in assent. Silence falls between the two of them, and the question of Shepard hovers on her lips. She hesitates, unsure of whether she should broach the subject when everything remains uncertain.

“It’s been over a week,” she says finally, staring down at the wires that she’d been fiddling with before Kaidan’s arrival. She doesn’t want to see the look on his face at the indirect mention of the woman he loves. The woman who Samantha once thought she loved.

“Yeah.” His voice becomes distinctly heavier with the single word. “As far as the Alliance knows, this ship might not have even made it. If Shepard’s--if she’s still--” He leaves these thoughts unfinished, not wanting to make a statement about Shepard’s status one way or another. “She might not even think we’re alive.”

“Do you think she’s still alive?” she asks. The words spill out of her mouth in her uncertainty of whether she should be asking him this. Her gaze remains on the wires. The different cords twist together, having been laid bare in her attempts to get different results by repositioning them by even the slightest amount.

Kaidan doesn’t answer at first. She can’t see his facial expression to determine whether she has caused him any distress, and perhaps it’s better that way. “I know that she wouldn’t want me to give up hope,” he replies. The somberness in his words belies the general optimism of his statement. “But…” He lets out a deep exhale. “She was already injured before she reached the beam. I watched her from the evac when she got hit. So it’s not only a matter of whether she survived whatever she did on the Crucible.” His breath wavers. “I’ve been in this place before, you know. Back when the first Normandy was destroyed and she got spaced. All the evidence pointed to her being dead. But part of me still hoped, and… God, it really made me feel like an idiot. It was really just false hope. And I don’t want to think that it’s false hope now, but… I don’t know. I guess I’m saying that I _want_ to believe that she’s alive, but I don’t know if I should.”

Samantha turns her eyes back to him. The look on his face breaks her heart. It’s as if he has aged a hundred years in the days that have passed since he said goodbye to Shepard on Earth.

“I’m sorry for bringing this up,” is all she can say in response.

“Don’t be sorry,” he says. “I can’t hide from the fact that she might not have survived. It’s something that needs to be talked about, just in… just in case.” He takes another deep breath. His hands twitch uselessly at his side, clenching and unclenching in an anxious motion. “I guess maybe I should tell you something else while we’re on the topic. A lot of us were talking--me, Liara, Garrus, Tali. Those of us who have known Shepard the longest and had to go through her death the first time. We were saying that once the repairs are pretty much done, we should have a sort of memorial service for those who didn’t make it. Even though I don’t want to think about adding more names to the memorial wall.”

“But--” Samantha can hardly believe what she’s hearing. “You just said that you didn’t want to give up hope. Now you sound like you’re accepting that she’s as good as dead.” Anger floods through her, and she looks back at the wires, unable to bear the weary look on Kaidan’s face.

Her words are initially met with silence. “This isn’t easy for me,” he says finally. “But everyone’s looking to me to make the decision one way or another. I thought I’d let you know that there’s a very real possibility that we might have to say goodbye to her.”

The last few words hitch in his throat. Hearing the emotion in his voice sends Samantha teetering over the edge of the emotional response that she has struggled to hold back over the past several days.

“But she’s Commander Shepard.” Her voice wavers and then breaks. “She’s supposed to survive.” The view of the console and wires in front of her blurs with the sting of unshed tears.

“Hey,” Kaidan whispers. He touches a comforting hand to her shoulder. “Hey. It’ll be--” He doesn’t finish the statement, but she knows that it would have been completed with “It’ll be all right.” It _won’t_ be all right, though, not as long as they’re stranded and Commander Shepard might be dead.

Samantha sniffles. “I know,” is the only thing that she can think to say. She looks at him with still-watery eyes. Despite the hopelessness of the situation, she remembers all of the trust that everyone has put in Shepard that she will eliminate the Reapers and live to tell the tale. Their hopes can’t all be in vain. It wouldn’t be a fitting end to one of the greatest heroes the galaxy has ever seen.

“We’ll just have to wait and see how things turn out,” says Kaidan. “As hard as that may be.”

“Yeah.” The single word leaves Samantha’s lips more like a resigned breath than anything else. “I, er… I should probably get back to working on the comms.”

Kaidan nods. He pats her shoulder again in a half-hearted gesture of comfort before leaving the comm room with a brief word of farewell. In his wake, he leaves the dark shadow of continued uncertainty that seeps its way into Samantha’s mind. She has tried to hard to shut out those whispers of doubt that Shepard is alive, but now the reality of the situation leaves her with a gnawing, empty sensation deep in her gut.

Her hands brace either side of the console that she has been working on. For the first time since the final assault on Earth, since they had to leave Shepard behind, she cries.

 

* * *

 

When everyone gathers on the crew deck a few days later, Samantha doesn’t want to accept what she knows is going to happen. She recognizes the necessity of it--if Shepard really is dead, they should begin the long process of moving on--but she also can’t shake the feeling that they are giving up too soon. It’s not her decision to make, though, and she trusts Kaidan’s judgment in whether this memorial service of sorts is necessary.

Shepard isn’t the only one of the fallen that they need to honor for their sacrifices, however. Plaques bearing EDI and Admiral Anderson’s names also await their placement on the memorial wall, even if Anderson’s death is as uncertain as Shepard’s and EDI is less “dead” and more “stopped.” It’s a strange sort of memorial service, with all of Shepard’s beloved crewmates--human, asari, turian, quarian, Prothean--coming together to mourn two humans and an AI. But “strange” takes on a different sort of meaning for those on the Normandy, and right now the only thing that’s strange is having to carry on without Shepard’s leadership.

“Almost two weeks ago, Shepard accomplished something that was thought to be impossible,” Kaidan says, being the first one to speak. “She activated the Crucible to destroy the Reapers, and even though we didn’t see it happen, I have faith that she pulled it off. But…” He trails off here, taking a breath to gather himself before continuing on. “No victory comes without loss of some kind. So now, we remember some of those who might not have been as lucky. Those who we have fought beside, honored as friends, learned things from, and even loved. I guess it’s time for us to say goodbye.” Samantha can’t ignore the tremble in Kaidan’s voice when he says these last words. “Joker, do you, uh… you want to say something about EDI?”

Joker takes a step forward. He has removed his usual baseball cap as a sign of respect. It makes him look different somehow, or maybe it’s because over the past several days grief has overtaken his normal jocularly sarcastic expression. He takes hold of the plaque with EDI’s name on it, his shoulders sagging as he takes a deep breath.

“So some of you know this already, but when I first met EDI, I, uh… I didn’t like her very much,” he says. “I thought I didn’t need an AI messing up everything in the ship. But then she helped save the Normandy, and, well… things changed. She started to become my friend, and then... something more than a friend, I guess. And at first I thought that falling for an AI was a totally stupid idea. That it was, I don’t know, _weird_ or something. But EDI meant a lot to me. _Means_ a lot to me,” he amends quickly. “It’s not fair that she had to be a casualty in this. It’s not--” Whatever words that he has meant to say die in his throat. He takes another deep breath, passing a hand across the plaque. “I swear this is only temporary,” he says. “Because I’m going to find a way to bring her back. Even if she’s not the same as before. Because I--” He breaks off again. “Yeah. I’m going to be with you again someday. Until then… goodbye.”

He turns and places the plaque on the wall. A gruff sort of breath, halfway between a sigh and a sob, escapes from him. Respectful silence fills the crew deck once the plaque has been put in place. Samantha thinks about her own memories of EDI: the mortification of finding out that EDI had been able to comprehend all of her comments about her voice, all of the times that she had gone to her with inquires about Shepard, the night at Shepard’s party when EDI had been infinitely patient with her in her drunken state. EDI’s shutdown has made her lose something far more than the helpful AI with an unfairly attractive voice.

Kaidan steps forward again once Joker has returned to the group. “I think all of us know that if anyone were the best person to eulogize Admiral David Anderson, it would be Shepard,” he says. “But, uh, that’s not really an option right now. But I knew him as well, and I believe that he was one of the bravest soldiers that the Alliance has to offer. You kind of have to be, if you’re a mentor to someone like Commander Shepard. But Anderson was a man who was rarely content with sitting back and watching things happen. His decision to stay on Earth and lead the resistance against the Reapers there definitely shows that. And the galaxy lost a great man when he decided to help Shepard see through her victory to the very end. What’s more important, though, is that he always believed in Shepard, even when he didn’t necessarily agree with her. And even though he gave control of this ship to her, we owe as much to him as we do to her. I hope that all of this remains a part of his legacy in the years to come.” Kaidan turns, hanging the plaque in the center of the memorial wall. “May you rest in peace, Anderson.”

Another moment of silence falls. The empty space above Anderson’s name and the one remaining plaque serves as an inescapable reminder of the thing that Samantha doesn’t want to accept. Despite everything that she has gone through with Shepard, despite all the times when she has realized that Shepard is far from the perfect person that she initially imagined, she has always thought of her as invincible. Now, as much as she wants to hope that Shepard has defied all odds and survived, a slowly sinking feeling tells her to stop hiding from reality. Commander Shepard is as human as anyone else, which means that she, too, is mortal. With mortality comes the inevitable acceptance of death, even when it applies to a woman who has already come back from the dead once before.

“So I guess that just leaves…” Kaidan trails off there. He has no reason to say anything more. Clearing his throat, swallowing hard, he continues on. “If, um, maybe everyone wants to say something about her. Since she, you know, affected us all in different ways.” His voice wavers. Even from where she stands, Samantha can see him rapidly losing his grip on his composure.

No one says anything at first, as if talking about their memories of Shepard will confirm her death. Finally, Garrus is the first one to speak.

“Shepard was a great friend to me,” he says. “Maybe ‘great’ is a bit of an understatement. But she was a damn good soldier, and I’m honored to say that I fought beside her against Saren and the Collectors and the Reapers. We both helped each other out of some tight spots, and I never doubted once that she’d always have my back. So I guess now I can only hope that in heaven or wherever she is right now, she’s saving a drink for me at the bar.”

Tali speaks next from where she stands beside Garrus. “When I first met Shepard, I had no idea how much of an impact she’d have on me. She has done a lot for me, but most importantly, she saved my people and allowed us to return to our homeworld. And for that, I will always be grateful to her. And for making the galaxy a better place for everyone, regardless of their race or species. Keelah se’lai, Shepard.”

“She was an admirable warrior,” Javik says. “Proof that the foolish determination of humans is not always a bad thing.” His words are brief, but considering his normal attitude toward so-called “primitives,” it’s high praise.

“I never thought we’d be in this place,” says Vega. “Having to, you know, say goodbye to her. I couldn’t have been more honored than to serve with her for these past few months. She really inspired me to be the best marine I could be. And… yeah. I’ll miss her a lot.”

“She helped me through some hard times,” Cortez adds. “Funny how she reminded me about the importance of letting go after loss, but she never really prepared any of us for having to lose her. I guess we’ll just have to follow her example. And she really was the best kind of example to follow.”

“I remember after she got spaced three years ago, none of us really knew what to do,” says Joker. “I mean, it seems kinda strange to say that one single person has been holding us together as a team, but it’s true. She’s always been there for us to talk to, and, you know, kick ass for us. But, I mean, I guess we can’t say that she didn’t go out with style. Taking out the Reapers and all. But still… I wish we didn’t have to lose so much in the process.” He falls silent, and Samantha suspects that he’s thinking about EDI as well as Shepard. “Anyway, it was one hell of a ride, Commander. See you on the flip side, I guess.”

Not many people are left to speak, and soon Samantha will have no choice but to say her part. Even after listening to everyone else, she has no idea what she is going to say. She could follow the example of the others and talk about how much of a hero Shepard is ( _was_ , she mentally corrects herself), but that is too simple of a solution. Her relationship with Shepard over the past few months has been far from simple, and so her words should reflect that.

She takes a deep breath before speaking, knowing that she is the one who needs to fill the silence. “So, er, I suppose most of you know this by now, but things between Commander Shepard and I were always a little complicated, to be honest. And I wish I could say that I saw her as nothing but this great hero that did everything she could to help everyone. Which is still true, I guess. But I’ve gotten to know her as both a hero and a woman, and I’ve realized that she’s just as human as the rest of us. She felt anger and fear and uncertainty, and she made mistakes. And I think that’s the most important thing that we should remember about her.” Her attempt to keep her voice steady fails with her last words. The sting of tears burns in her eyes, and she hates it. Even Kaidan has been able to hold onto his emotions by a single thread. She doesn’t want to be the one person who breaks down.

She can’t get any more words out, and so she ends there. From beside her, Liara places a hand on her arm in a silent gesture of comfort.When Liara opens her mouth to speak next, Samantha realizes that the only two people who haven’t spoken are those who have known Shepard as a lover in a capacity beyond spending a single night together.

“At one point, Shepard meant the entire galaxy to me,” says Liara. “I have loved and subsequently lost her in many different ways. But regardless of what existed between us, I knew that I could always trust in her as a loyal comrade. She has taught me so much about myself, more than I think she ever realized. And even though I know that things weren’t always easy for her, I think the amount of lives that she has touched is more than enough of a sufficient legacy for her to leave behind. I only wish that it didn’t have to end this way.”

Liara casts her eyes downward. Now it is Samantha’s turn to comfort her, squeezing her hand gently. At least she is now not the only one on the brink of tears.

“So, um…” Kaidan’s false start to his words of farewell to Shepard hang in the air, refusing to take on any further meaning until he continues on. “Shepard is… She was… She’s an extraordinary woman. There aren’t really any words to describe how lucky I feel to have been by her side over the past couple of months. And I know--I know she knew what she was doing, that she’d probably accepted that she might not make it through this, but still…” He swallows, looking down at the plaque in his hands. “I don’t want to think of this as goodbye.” A quick, shallow breath escapes from him. “I guess wherever you are, Shepard, you already know this, but I miss you, and I love you.”

He turns away from the group, contemplating the plaque bearing her name. He passes a hand across it, his fingers tracing the letters emblazoned on it. The air in Samantha’s lungs goes cold as she awaits the inevitable moment that he places Shepard’s name among those who have been lost.

But he doesn’t. His hesitation lasts far too long to be a mark of his reluctance to make her death final. Samantha isn’t sure whether she should pity him or be relieved that he has not given up all hope yet. Everyone else gathered around the memorial wall is absolutely silent, unsure of how to proceed after this turn of events. Finally, when Kaidan turns from the wall and walks away holding onto Shepard’s plaque, everyone else takes that as their cue to leave.

Eventually, only Samantha and Liara remain. They stand close together, each lost in their own thoughts. Samantha’s eyes fixate upon the empty spot on the wall where she has fully expected Shepard’s name to be placed.

“I didn’t think that it would end this way,” she says. “We’re mourning her, but it still doesn’t really feel like she’s gone.”

Liara murmurs in assent. “Kaidan thinks she’s alive, you know,” she replies.

“You think so?” The certainty of Liara’s words surprises her. Even though only a few days ago Kaidan had been holding on to the hope that Shepard has survived, the very existence of this memorial service has made her think that he had all but given up. What other reason would he have, though, for not placing Shepard’s name on the wall?

“I’m sure of it.” Liara turns her eyes upon Samantha. They are damp with silent tears. “And if holding onto that hope is what helps him, then I can’t really find fault in it. Because it very well may be that he’s right.”

“I don’t want to give up hope either,” admits Samantha. “I don’t think any of us do.”

“You’re probably right,” Liara agrees. “Shepard has gone against everyone’s expectations more than once. It would be just like her to survive something like this.”

Samantha laughs, a quiet, watery sound. A leftover tear escapes from her eye, which she promptly wipes away. “So say she _is_ alive…” she begins, not sure whether she wants to explore too far into the hypothetical.

“Then we’re going to have to do everything in our power to find her. I think that’s what she’d want us to do.”

Samantha nods in a decisive gesture. After everything that has been said in front of the memorial wall, all of the shared memories and farewells to the galaxy’s savior, it seems counterproductive to reject her death. Deep down in her gut, however, that small sliver of hope wrestles with the reality that she feels obligated to accept. Call it optimism, call it denial, but Samantha won’t let uncertainty extinguish that hope. If Shepard is the woman that she knows--all stubbornness and fierce determination, perfection and imperfection all at once--then she will find a way. Throughout everything that she has endured in the time that she has known Shepard, Samantha has at least learned that much.

“Yeah,” she says. “We’ll see her again.”

 

* * *

 

And they do, as it turns out. A lifetime later, it seems, and Shepard is battered and  broken, but she’s still _Shepard_ , alive and breathing. Her nurses initially make a fuss when half the crew bursts their way into her hospital room, although soon they quietly give up and let everyone catch up with their commander after weeks and months of separation. There are tears and laughter, and most of it doesn’t even seem real. Then again, everyone mourning her death doesn’t feel real anymore, either.

They all take turns talking with her, one at a time so as not to overwhelm her. When it’s finally Samantha’s turn, she isn’t sure what to say. The time that has passed since they have last seen each other is nearly half as long as the time that they had known each other on the Normandy. Shepard is more of a figure to her now, a figure of hope and lingering frustration.

“How have you been, Traynor?” Shepard asks her.

“I’ve been--” She doesn’t quite know how to finish the statement. “Doing my best,” are the words that eventually leave her mouth.

“Good to hear.” A quiet moment of hesitation passes between them, not unlike those pauses in their conversations back when their communication was fraught with uncertainty. “I heard that you never really gave up believing that I was alive,” Shepard continues finally.

“Yeah, I, er…” Samantha trails off there, unable to properly articulate her thoughts. “Maybe I decided that you’re one who we should all believe in. Even after everything.”

Shepard smiles--a genuine smile, skin pulled tight across new scars. “Yeah. I guess I already knew that, huh? Well… I’m glad that after everything, you’re still here.”

“Me too.”

Silence falls between them again, but maybe nothing more needs to be said. Because despite everything--falling in and out of love with her, simultaneously accepting her flaws and recognizing her victories--Samantha will never deny that Commander Shepard is a hero. And maybe things have turned out far differently from what she had expected on that day when she first met Shepard, but at least they’re both alive, and the galaxy is safe.

And for now, that is enough.


End file.
